The Revolutionary Possibilities of Singlehood
Singles have been and continue to be regarded as anomalies and threats to the social order in the United States and elsewhere (Moran). Within the humanities, the growing interdisciplinary field of Singles Studies builds on scholarship in queer theory and gender and women’s studies to highlight the evolution of relationships that fall outside the structure of traditional marriage and the nuclear family to include singlehood and other types of intimate relationships that do not revolve around these conventional models. As more people opt toward relationship models and orientations that do not involve marriage, it is important that scholarship in the humanities reflect this revolutionary thinking.
Singles Studies prompts us to consider how singleness shapes, affects, and makes possible diverse lived experiences and identities. Beyond relationship status, we might consider who or what the “single” is and their place in society. Evidence suggests that singles, especially young single folks, are involved in social and political activism at higher rates than married people (Earl et al.). This has precedence with the suffragists of a century ago, many of whom were single and childfree, to the college activists of the 1960s who were integral in the Civil Rights movement and anti-Vietnam protests through the recent Black Lives Matter protests.
Our panel invites proposals for papers that engage with the idea that singlehood is a revolutionary symbol in a world that, despite the growing numbers of singles, still privileges marriage. We invite papers that look to examples of fictional single characters (never-married, widowed, or divorced) or single people in the media to explore the ways in which singleness opens up and invites further evolution of our understanding of identity as it intersects with ideas about singleness.