Call for Abstracts: Housing for Single People. Narratives, New Perspectives, and Methodological Challenges
"Housing for Single People: Narratives, New Perspectives, and Methodological Challenges." Online seminar co-organized by KU Leuven, UGent, Politecnico di Milano, and Politecnico di Torino. Call opens 01 Nov 2024, deadline 06 Jan 2025. Seminar date: 21 Mar 2025. Details: hspresearchseminar.wordpress.com
In many countries across the globe, mainly but not exclusively in the Global North, the number of one-person households has increased since the 1960s (Cohen 2021). Despite this trend, there is a mismatch between the existing housing stock and demographic realities, as well as a significant blind spot in contemporary and past housing imaginaries. Between the late 19th century and the aftermath of the Second World War, the nuclear family model became the dominant paradigm in housing design across many Western and colonised regions, thereby marginalising other household formations and housing types. Historically, however, one-person households have been an integral part of societies, especially urban ones (De Groot, Devos, and Schmidt 2015). Today, housing for singles remains largely understudied within architectural and urban history even though it could inform our understanding of urbanisation and socio-demographic patterns.
This online research seminar seeks to gather doctoral researchers and early career scholars investigating housing for singles and other non-normative households. The thematic focus is on exploring singlehood through the lenses of architecture, interior design, and urbanism, with the goal of critically examining the ambivalent position of single-person households in history, capturing both their precarious realities and their potential for emancipation. On this topic, we aim to enhance the understanding of the state of the art, build a transnational network of researchers, and engage in existing debates within housing history.
We particularly encourage interdisciplinary approaches drawing on, for example, methods of oral history, microhistory, and ethnography, or perspectives from social history, gender, and queer studies, thereby challenging conventional narratives surrounding housing and singlehood. We are also interested in contributions that engage with diverse geographies, especially non-Western contexts. Finally, we aim to deepen our understanding of how various actors—such as governmental bodies, reformers, investors, urban planners, inhabitants and architects, as well as trade and popular media—have constructed narratives about singlehood and contributed to the production of housing.
Selected Bibliography
Arbeitsgruppe Regionalgeschichte. Der ledige Un-Wille: zur Geschichte lediger Frauen in der Neuzeit: una storia del nubilato in età e contemporanea = Norma e contrarietà. Edited by Siglinde Clementi and Alessandra Spada. 1. Aufl. Wien: Folio-Verl, 1998.
Bennett, Judith M., and Amy M. Froide, eds. Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250-1800. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812200218.1.
Chudacoff, Howard P. The Age of the Bachelor: Creating an American Subculture. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999.
De Groot, Julie, Isabelle Devos, and Ariadne Schmidt, eds. Single Life and the City 1200–1900. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137406408.
Eckhold Sassin, Erin. Single People and Mass Housing in Germany, 1850–1930. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781501342752.
Hartman, Saidiya V. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals. First published as a Norton paperback. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2020.
Heynen, Hilde, and Gulsum Baydar, eds. Negotiating Domesticity: Spatial Productions of Gender in Modern Architecture. London, New York: Routledge, 2005.
Klinenberg, Eric. Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone. London: Penguin Books, 2013.
Kracauer, Siegfried. The Salaried Masses. Duty and Distraction in Weimar Germany. Translated by Quintin Hoare. 1930. Reprint, London, New York: Verso, 1998.
Lauro, Amandine. Coloniaux, ménagères et prostituées au Congo belge, 1885-1930. Histoire. Loverval: Labor, 2005.
Palazzi, Maura. Donne sole: storie dell’altra faccia dell’Italia tra antico regime e società contemporanea. Milano: Mondadori, 1997.
Potvin, John. Bachelors of a Different Sort: Queer Aesthetics, Material Culture and the Modern Interior in Britain. Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press, 2014.
Sarti, Raffaella, and Margareth Lanzinger, eds. Nubili e celibi tra scelta e costrizione : secoli XVI-XX. Udine: Forum, 2006.
Schmid, Susanne, Dietmar Eberle, and Margrit Hugentobler. A History of Collective Living: Models of Shared Living. Berlin, Boston: Birkhäuser, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783035618686.
Traister, Rebecca. All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016.
Submission Guidelines
Please submit abstracts of up to 300 words and a brief bio (maximum 100 words) via email to hsp.researchseminar@gmail.com.
Key Dates
Call for Abstract Launch: 01 November 2024 Call for Abstract Deadline: 06 January 2025 Notification of Acceptance: 20 January 2025 Online Seminar: 21 March 2025
Organizing Committee
Michele Rinaldi (Politecnico di Torino, KU Leuven) Beatriz Van Houtte Alonso (UGent) Professor Gaia Caramellino (Politenico di Milano) Professor Fredie Floré (KU Leuven) Professor Anne Kockelkorn (UGent)
