*CFP: Single Lives: 200 Years of Independent Women in Literature and
Popular Culture University College Dublin, 13-14 October 2017*
*Keynote Speaker: Rebecca Traister*
*Proposal Deadline 1 April 2017, midnight Dublin time.*
*Notifications by 1 May 2017*
This conference will explore the last 200 years of literature and popular
media by, about, and for single women in relation to aesthetics and form,
race, sexuality, class, space, reproduction and the family, political
movements, and labor.
Literary scholar Jennifer Fleissner has convincingly argued that young,
independent women were the center around which anxieties and excitement in
the modern era coalesced. A range of historians, demographers, and literary
scholars have focused on the social and political significance of diverse
single women in the late nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first
centuries. Moving between the family home and domestic independence,
between household and public labor, and between chastity and a range of
sexualities, the single woman remains a literary and social focus.
In recent years, especially in relation to UK and US elections, there has
been an explosion of popular interest in contemporary singleness. Rebecca
Traister’s *Big Girls Don’t Cry *and* All the Single Ladies*, comedian Aziz
Ansari’s *Modern Romance, *Eric Klinenberg’s *Going Solo*, the *Washington
Post’s *“Solo-ish” column, and the work of psychologist and single-rights
activist Bella DePaulo’s work all explore what it means to be a socially,
politically, and sexually active single person in the 21st century. News
outlets, film, television, and a host of social and marketing media have
demonstrated that people are fascinated by the changing status of singles.
Singleness Studies has emerged as an academic field over the last two
decades but has rarely had its own forum for collaboration and exchange.
This conference will bring together multiple disciplinary perspectives to
uncover the social, political, economic, and cultural connections between
the “singly blessed” women and “bachelor girls” of the 19th and early-20th
century and “all the single ladies” of the contemporary moment. We seek
proposals that analyze single lives within or across this time frame, from
disciplines including literature, media studies, history, geography,
sociology, architecture, political science, and more. Papers and full
panels that create new perspectives by crossing boundaries and integrating
multiple disciplines are especially welcome.
*Possible topics include*
· Representation of singles in literature
· Representation of singles in film, television, and other digital
media
· Narrative form
· Space and architecture
· Demographic change
· Reproductive rights and family structures
· Reproduction and temporality
· Independent women’s labor and political work
· “Women adrift” and crisis narratives
· Singleness and race, class, or identity politics
· Queer singleness
· Familiar Figures: bachelor girls, spinsters, new women, and single
ladies
· The single and the state
· Singleness and literary or media genre
· Conservative and radical independence
· Singleness in Trump’s America
· Single activism
· Comparative singleness
Scholars from all disciplines are encouraged to apply.
*Full Panel Proposals:* Panel coordinators should submit a
200-word rationale for the panel as whole. For each contributor, please
submit a 250-word abstract, a short bio, and contact information. Panels
that include diverse panelists with a range of affiliations, career
experiences, and disciplinary homes are strongly encouraged. Panels should
include 4 papers. Submissions can be emailed as a Word document to
[log in to unmask]
*Individual Papers:* Individuals submitting paper proposals should provide
an abstract of 250 words, a short bio, and contact information. Submissions
can be emailed as a Word document to [log in to unmask]
*Conference Statement:* We hope to host a diverse, welcoming, open first
Single Lives conference. We understand diversity to include attendees as
well as academic subject, approach, and field. We welcome comparative
projects, though because of its smaller scale, this conference will be
conducted in English.
Please direct all questions about the conference and the submission process
to: [log in to unmask]
For up to date conference details, see our website:
https://singlelives2017.wordpress.com/
Find us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/Single-Lives-2017-Conference-1262119710546609/
Follow us on Twitter: @SingleLives2017
*Conference Organizers*:
Kate Fama
Jorie Lagerwey
School of English, Drama, and Film
University College Dublin
*Conference Sponsors*
College of Arts and Humanities, University College Dublin
Humanities Institute, University College Dublin
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