Hanne Blank

Dr. Hanne Blank is a historian, writer, editor, and public speaker whose interdisciplinary work lies at the intersection of bodies, selves, and cultures.  Her fascination with the ways bodies—and all that we experience and enact through them—help to create us as members of cultures with highly specific individual and social identities have led her to work on topics ranging from fatness to heterosexuality and feminist health to virginity.

The author or editor of ten books that include Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality (Beacon Press), Virgin: The Untouched History (Bloomsbury), and the forthcoming FAT (Bloomsbury, fall 2020), Dr. Blank joyfully bridges the town/gown divide with a deep commitment to public history as well as more traditional academic work.  Other publications include, but are certainly not limited to, chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Body, numerous articles and book reviews, and a forthcoming monograph on feminist women’s health activism in the U.S. South from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Dr. Blank received the Ph.D. in History from Emory University, where she was also trained in the Emory Center for Ethics.  As an educator-activist who combines historical and bioethics work in the causes of feminism, women’s health, LGBTQIA+ liberation, disability rights, radical body acceptance, and progressive Judaism, she has been a guest instructor, lecturer, and community advocate at institutions including Emory Healthcare, the Emory University School of Medicine,  Emory University, Harvard University, Congregation Bet Haverim, Dickinson College, Bloomsburg University, the Virginia Festival of the Book, St. Mary’s College, Johns Hopkins University, Minnesota College of Art and Design, and many others. For the past 3+ years, Dr. Blank has also been committed to a social-media based activist project, the Reasons Not to Quit (#reasonsnottoquit), which provides daily doses of politically progressive, affirming mental and social health support to all via Facebook and Twitter.

Currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Women’s and Gender Studies department at Denison University,  Dr. Blank teaches courses including “Issues in Feminism,” “How Sexuality Shaped America,” “Women, Bodies, and the Making of Medical Knowledge,” and “Being Lesbian: Same-Sex Loving Women in the U.S. from 1800-2000” as well as advising advanced research.

Dr. Blank lives in a small town in central Ohio with her husband, a liberal distribution of dogs and cats, and ever-expanding collections of books, fountain pen inks, lipsticks, and yarn.