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Hanne Blank, also known as Hanne Blank Boyd, is an American historian, writer, and editor. Her written works include Virgin: The Untouched History, Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality, and The Unapologetic Fat Girl's Guide to Exercise and Other Incendiary Acts.
Her first book, Big Big Love: A Sourcebook for People of Size and Those Who Love Them, was published by Greenery Press. She became an editor of the defunct Scarletletters.com, which gave rise to the award-winning independent sex education website Scarleteen, where she was also a contributing editor and which is still owned and run by Heather Corinna. In 2003, her book Unruly Appetites was published by Seal Press. Her history of virginity, Virgin: The Untouched History, was published in 2007 by Bloomsbury Press.
As an independent scholar, she was a 2004-2005 Scholar of the Institute For Teaching and Research on Women at Towson University, Maryland.See Library of Congress Contributor biographical information for Virgin: The Untouched History. As an instructor, she has taught at the university level at Brandeis University, Tufts University and Whitworth College. From 2017 to 2022, she was Visiting Assistant Professor in Women's and Gender Studies at Denison University.
In 2012, she published Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality, which begins with her own life experience and then explores a history of late 19th and early 20th century construction of the concept of sexuality. In 2012, she also published The Unapologetic Fat Girl’s Guide to Exercise and Other Incendiary Acts, and explained in an interview with Curve, "Moving your body for your own reasons, taking pleasure in moving your body, is incendiary for fat women because fat women's bodies aren't seen as deserving of that care, that attention, or that freedom to move and take up space in the world." In 2022, her book Fat was released as part of the Object Lessons series from Bloomsbury.
In a review for the San Francisco Chronicle, Bob Blaisdell writes, "Though scholarly, Hanne Blank's "Virgin: The Untouched History" treats her topic with a writer's, not an academic's, interest. That is, she's curious about and surprised by what she discovers, and keeps the book moving along at a reader's pace." Ellen D. Gilbert writes for Library Journal it is "a very good book", but "The reader in search of a chronological or carefully delineated thematic approach to the subject will be disappointed." In a review for Booklist, Annie Tully writes, "This is also strictly a Western history, with modern-day "honor killings" not mentioned until the epilogue. ... Perhaps Blank's next treatise will provide a needed further look at this complex and significant topic."
In a review for Library Journal, Jennifer Stout writes, "Adding to the expanding body of knowledge about the history and sociology of sexual identity, Blank has produced a challenging, clear, and interesting study of how Western views of what it means to be "straight" have changed over the past two centuries and continue to change." George de Stefano writes in a review for the New York Journal of Books that Blank's approach to the topic "will be familiar to anyone who has read Michel Foucault or any of his many intellectual progeny" and the book "is indebted to Jonathan Ned Katz, whom she cites, and if she adds little to Katz's account besides more recent references and a personal perspective on the topic, Straight nonetheless is accessible and engaging, often witty and penetrating in its insights."
Ryan Linkof writes for Journal of Social History, "A crucial aspect of her critique of heterosexuality stems from her clever undoing of the premise that heterosexuality must exist because it is necessary for reproduction." In The Baltimore Sun, Laura Dattaro writes, "Because heterosexuality is presumed "normal," it often escapes the sort of examination to which homosexuality is subjected", and "Blank calls the accepted state into question, and in doing so undermines its relevance." In a review for the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health, Sharon Scales Rostosky writes, "Blank reveals to us the doxa of heterosexuality, the socially constructed but invisible walls that threaten to keep us stuck in claustrophobic rooms that limit us intellectually, scientifically, socially, and politically."
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