[Commlist] Critical Hunk and Babe Studies CFP, A TaPRA Bodies and Performance Working Group Online Event,14 April 2023

Critical Hunk and Babe Studies



A TaPRA Bodies and Performance Working Group Online Event

14 April 2023


We invite you to re-imagine with us the critical and cultural 
significance of hunks and babes. We are inspired by Kareem 
Khubchandani’s framing of a Critical Aunty Studies, which focuses on how 
‘the aunty acquire[s] her performative capacity to recall and 
recalibrate systems of racialization, gender, kinship, violence, and 
care? How can thinking with aunty offer forms, structures, and 
aesthetics to make sense of lived conditions and to create alternative 
sociopolitical ecologies?’ (2022). Following these alternative 
socio-political ecologies, we posit that the concept, role, label or 
quality of babeness and hunkness can offer a heightening of gender 
expression that is profoundly transgressive, even as it appears to 
reinforce a status quo. However, we also acknowledge that a positioning 
of hunkness and babeness is not necessarily dependent on a self-aware 
burlesquing of identity. Indeed, these roles might be argued to be 
inherently sincere and unironic states of being. During this online 
event, we are keen to explore how Critical Hunk and Babe Studies might 
re-examine the potential of hunks and babes to shed new light on matters 
of gender, sexuality, race, age, disability and class through the lens 
of hunkness and babeness in cultural production.


In the attempt to reduce mid-year pressure, we invite the sharing of 
‘bits of stuff’ (5-10 minute provocations/ think pieces / artist talk/ 
practical sharings), which might be pre-recorded or delivered live. We 
welcome responses from all disciplinary perspectives.


Possible areas for consideration or exploration around the hunk or babe 
might include, but are not limited to:


  *

    The critical / radical / transgressive potential of the babe or hunk

  *

    Hyper femininities and masculinities

  *

    Drag practices and states

  *

    Artists/ individuals exploring states of babeness and hunkness

  *

    (Re)positioning historical figures as hunks and babes

  *

    Historical shifts in perception around the hunk and babe

  *

    Queering the hunk and the babe

  *

    Disability activism and the hunk and the babe

  *

    Racialised and orientalist characteristics of hunk/babe dichotomy

  *

    Class-based framings of the hunk and the babe

  *

    Positioning of the hunk or babe as a consumed product and/or
    resistance to being consumed

  *

    Babes and hunks who enable or disrupt one another’s babe and hunkness

  *

    Support and rivalry between hunks and babes

  *

    Babe or hunk as insider or outsider within a community

  *

    Ageing positioning or defying infantilism

  *

    Disrupting expectations/ behaviours associated with those roles

  *

    ‘Hunk of junk’, hunk of meat, Babe/Baby/ Baby Doll/bae/boo -
    terminology associated with hunks and babes

  *

    Voices and tones associated with the hunk and babe

  *

    ‘Don’t call me babe’ – rejection, reclamation, self-reclamation of
    the labels, ‘hunk’ and ‘babe’

  *

    Self-construction as a hunk or babe

  *

    Animal naming associated with hunks and babes - fox /foxy, chick,
    stud, stallion etc

  *

    Hair, shaving, waxing, smoothness

  *

    Materials (leather, denim etc), costumes, props, textures, kinks
    associated with the babe and hunk

  *

    Revealing, concealing, objectification, fetishisation of parts of
    the body

  *

    The muscularity/ exercise underpinning the hunk / babe

  *

    The labours / surgeries involved in developing babeness/hunkness

  *

    Embracing frivolity, lightness, lack of seriousness, pleasure and
    delight

  *

    Embodied choreographies (daily activities or theatrical) of the hunk
    or babe

  *

    Geographies and spaces associated with the hunk or babe (Houses,
    Cabarets, Balls, Gym, Boudoir)


Please send a proposal of 100-150 words, a short biography and access 
needs for this online event to the Theatre and Performance Research 
Association (TaPRA) Bodies and Performance Working Group email address 
((bodiesandperf /at/ tapra.org) ) by the 3rd of March. We will respond to your 
proposal by the 7th of March.


We invite you to join us in this deeply pleasurable and delightful 
exploration where we can all experience ourselves as hunks and babes of 
the mind. We envisage this Working Group event as an opportunity to 
plant research seeds which will ultimately grow into our theme for the 
2023 TaPRA Conference.




Tobi Poster-Su, Thea Stanton, Sarah Crews and Alissa Clarke

(TaPRA Bodies and Performance Working Group Co-Convenors)


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