Deadline | Call for papers – Towards Intersectional Feminist Singlehood Studies

Alongside the growing share of single people globally (Kislev, 2019; Adamczyk & Trepanowski, 2023), the need for scholarly attention to singlehood as an identity, an experience, and a socio–cultural phenomenon is increasingly recognized. Historically, research has tended to take singlehood as a byproduct of coupledom, implying that single lives are viewed as empty, meaningless and marked by failure (Cobb, 2012; Lahad, 2017; Pickens & Braun, 2018). Moreover, scientific accounts of singlehood often simplistically draw associations with wellbeing and happiness, assuming that coupled individuals are better off on both variables (see critiques of these approaches, e.g. DePaulo, 2023a; Lahad, 2023).

In response, leading singlehood scholar Bella DePaulo (2017, 2023a) argues that research must take singlehood as an object of study in its own right. This means that we need to approach singlehood as a process of subjectivation and, rather than uncritically reproducing assumptions and stereotypes about single people as (only) lonely and miserable, we must openly explore the multiplex configurations of singlehood and singles’ varied life experiences. By mobilizing their activist traditions of questioning mainstream knowledge–production paradigms as well as social hegemonies and injustices, gender studies and related critical fields (such as queer studies, critical disability (or crip) studies, and critical race studies) are ideally positioned to take on the study of singlehood. These fields of study are already undertaking research on singles, with scholars from various (other) fields also engaging with feminist and other critical epistemologies in their studies of singlehood. This special issue therefore constitutes a concerted effort to bring together such fairly scattered research, with the ambition of showing, echoing Kinneret Lahad1, how intersectional feminist and related epistemologies are central to advancing the field of singlehood studies.

Building on the above emerging scholarly legacy, with this special issue, we want to invite intersectional–feminist scholars across different fields, disciplines and national contexts to take up the research topic of singlehood. Our ambition is to show thecentrality of intersectional feminist and related critical epistemologies in moving the field of singlehood studies forward. In particular, we hope to see contributions that challenge hitherto dominant epistemological paradigms and widely unquestioned assumptions to show what gender and feminist studies (broadly defined) specifically has to offer singlehood studies. We hope to receive contributions that embrace complexity, nuance, ambivalence, and contradictions in their methodologies and empirical narratives, as well as in conceptual pieces, and we expect that intersectionality will play a key role herein. We welcome papers that, using a variety ofmethodologies, will address the following or related themes:

Gendered singlehood and relationships, such as:
–Single parenthood
–Variations in (most) important relationships in adult singles’ lives (incl. friendships)
–Singles’ relationships with children in their lives (e.g. being aunts, uncles or other significant adults)
– Singles’ dating lives
–Singlehood and humanimal relationships (e.g. singles’ relationships with their pets)

Intersectional analyses of gendered singlehood, such as:
–Different kinds of singlehood: ‘single at heart’(DePaulo 2023b), widow(er)s, divorcees, serially monogamous singles, long–term singles or lifelong (involuntary) singles
– Singlehood and class
– Singlehood and fatness
– Singlehood and disability
– Singlehood and ethnicity
– Singlehood across different sexualities (incl. asexuality or aromanticism)

Gendered singlehood across different domains, such as:
– Singles’ experiences at work beyond work/life conflicts
– Singlehood and (alternative) housing (e.g. communal living)
– Singlehood and mobility (incl. for work or leisure)
– Singlehood in popular culture, media and marketing
– Singlehood and social media

Political singlehood:
– Structural ‘singlisms’ (e.g. singles’ experiences of discrimination in the health care system)
– Cultural ‘singlisms’ (e.g. micro-aggressions and everyday social exclusions)
– Singles’ resistance, activism and advocacy (incl., everyday (micro-)resistances and the emergence of, e.g., podcasts on ‘reclaiming’ singlehood and singles’ empowerment)