11.16.06
Posted in Virgin book, advertisement, helping, making book, public speaking, publishing, sexuality, women at 4:09 pm by Hanne Blank
PUBLIC TALKS AND CLASSROOM LECTURES, 2007
The fascinating, misunderstood, controversial topic of virginity is the subject of Hanne Blank’s groundbreaking new book Virgin: The Untouched History. Aspects of this history—a history chronicled for the first time in this sweeping new survey—are also the subject of four vibrant, information-packed, surprising, and entertaining talks that Hanne is offering for 2007.
Reviews have raved that Blank’s work is “a huge helping of stereotype busting, old-fashioned feminist consciousness raising” that “does for sex what feminism does for women: gives us context.” Conference and event organizers say “fantastic speaker… and a huge part of why the conference went so well!” and describe her as “at once learned and accessible, informative and provocative.”
To bring Hanne Blank and Virgin: The Untouched History to your campus, conference, or other organization, contact her at hanne at hanneblank dot com or contact Jennifer Baumgardner or Amy Richards at Soapbox, Inc. at (646) 486-1414.
TOPICS AND THEMES
Gypsy Flowers and Piss-Prophets: A Historical Tour of Virginity Testing
Human beings have been inventing virginity tests for as long as we have recognized the status of virginity itself—since before written history began. Some of the earliest documents of Western culture discuss the problem of how to verify virginity. Across the centuries, women and girls have had their genitals inspected, endured having their breasts and buttocks groped, drunk bizarre concoctions, and literally had smoke blown up their vaginas, all in the name of determining whether they were virginal. No virginity test has ever done better than chance at determining anyone’s sexual status. Even modern medicine cannot offer us anything more conclusive than conjecture. But the methods that we have tried over the centuries, whether seemingly abstract (astrological forecasts), bizarre (sniffing lettuce), or seemingly scientific and modern (gynecologists’ exams), reveal volumes about what we have believed to be true about the body, about sexuality, and about the elusive quality of virginity itself.
(Includes audience participation. Approximately 50 minutes, plus Q&A.)
Hymen Wars: The Two Thousand Year Search For Anatomical Proof of Virginity
Ask most people how you can tell whether or not a woman is a virgin, and it is likely that they’ll mention the hymen. The condition of this storied membrane has, in recent history, been considered so definitive of virginity that reports of its condition have been admitted as evidence in courts of law, and we often assume that this is not only warranted but that the hymen has been known and understood this way throughout human history. Nothing could be further from the truth: the hymen’s physical reality wasn’t even confirmed by dissection until 1546, after twelve centuries of medical debate about whether it existed at all. Even then, some physicians dismissed it as nothing more than a minor birth defect. The startling history of the hymen, stretching from ancient Greece to the pages of modern medical journals, is a saga of controversy, projection, paranoia, and medical mystery that continues to infuriate and amaze.
(Visual component includes graphic clinical photographs. May not be suitable for all audiences. Approximately 50 minutes, plus Q&A.)
True Love Legislates: “Abstinence,” Education, and the Politics of Virginity in America
Since 1996, the United States has been the only nation in the developed world—and one of only a few worldwide—with national legislation regarding the virginity of its citizens. Why, and what does this mean in the larger context of American history and culture? With hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and the staunch support of powerful political and religious conservatives, the legislation that created “abstinence”-only sexuality education was never subject to public referendum, yet it neatly encapsulates nearly a century’s paranoia about the sexuality of young women and men. Devoid of oversight requirements or even proof that “abstinence” programs work (and indeed with increasing evidence to the contrary), “abstinence” education policy is creating a chilling effect on freedom of information and expression not just in America’s public schools and youth programs but in the halls of public research institutions like the Centers for Disease Control. Public figures, including several former Surgeons General of the United States, have called for an end to this controversial Federal program, but economics, social history, and politics alike make repeal a difficult task. A hard-hitting and layered look at the big picture of “abstinence” in the context of American history and culture.
(Approximately 50 minutes, plus Q&A.)
Virgins, Veils, and Eunuchs For The Sake of Heaven: Virginity in the World of Early Christianity
In the fifth century BCE, the Greek poet Bacchylides wrote that “as a skillful painter gives a face beauty, just so chastity gives charm to a life of high aims.” But what Bacchylides meant by “chastity” was light-years away from what Saint Augustine, writing at an equal distance into the Common Era, meant by the same term. The development and spread of Christianity brought with it a startling new philosophy of sexuality and of virginity in particular: to a world in which the married household was the cornerstone of the social and political order, it introduced the notion that “…he who gives in marriage does well, he who does not does better.” (I Cor. 7:38) In order for this radical reprioritization of virginity to succeed, the virginity culture of the pre-Christian world had to be encompassed and transformed, and the results aggressively promoted in doctrine, ritual, organizational structure, and the rapid generation of a vast and fascinating literature. The result was nothing less than a paradigm shift in the Western culture of virginity, one which continues to shape our thoughts, emotions, and experiences of virginity a millennium and a half later.
(Approximately 50 minutes, plus Q&A.)
FOR ACADEMICS ONLY — HANNE BLANK IN THE CLASSROOM
While visiting your campus as a featured speaker, Hanne Blank may be available (pending scheduling) to enrich student experience by speaking in undergraduate and graduate classrooms on general subjects relating to her work as a feminist writer, activist, and historian. With abundant classroom experience and guest-teaching credits at institutions including Johns Hopkins University, Tufts University, Brandeis University, University of Delaware, Virginia Commonwealth University, and many others, she is happy to speak to many topics related to her past and current work.
For educators who would prefer more structured and topical guest-teaching on subjects relating specifically to virginity and the book Virgin: The Untouched History, Ms. Blank is also offering
topic-based classroom teaching on the following subjects:
Virginity as a Problem in Contemporary Medical Ethics
Suitable for women’s and gender studies, applied philosophy, and ethics classrooms, this topic requires students to read two articles from major medical journals (four for graduate classes) in preparation for a wide-ranging discussion about issues of institutional and cultural misogyny, issues regarding medical definition of anatomical “normality,” patient consent and confidentiality, legal and forensic issues regarding physician interpretation of anatomical evidence, and physician liability for patients’ social and cultural safety. (Bibliography for this class will be provided to the professor upon confirmation of booking. Study questions for students will be provided.)
Under Wraps: Gender, Appearance, and Power in Tertullian’s De virginibus velandis
Suitable for women’s history, history of Christianity, ancient literature, and Classical history classrooms, this class centers around close historical reading of Tertullian, De virginibus velandis (On the Veiling of Virgins), with the goal of better understanding the role that gender, sexuality, biological sex, appearance, and women’s agency played within the intersecting cultures of Tertullian’s world and within the developing theology of third-century Christianity. (The core text may, depending on the nature of the class, be read either in Latin or in English translation. Study questions for students will be provided.)
Virgin Sexy: Sex, Power, and the Eroticization of Virginity
Suitable for women’s and gender studies, cultural studies, human sexuality, and modern social history classrooms, this class considers the complicated issue of how virginity is eroticized in Western culture and what ramifications this has for the personal well-being, cultural and legal agency, and sexual self-image and experience of women. Discussion centers around 3 readings (graduate classes may have more) from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (Bibliography for this class will be provided to the professor upon confirmation of booking. Study questions for students will be provided.)
To bring Hanne Blank and Virgin: The Untouched History to your campus, conference, or organization, contact her at hanne at hanneblank dot com or contact Jennifer Baumgardner or Amy Richards at Soapbox, Inc. at (646) 486-1414.
Permalink
11.13.06
Posted in Virgin book, making book, writing at 1:04 pm by Hanne Blank
I’ve started thinking and writing a bit about what I plan to be doing for my next Big Book.
Note that for me, there are various categories of books. There are Small Books, which are books that I can write with little or no research, usually in a relatively short period of time, where “relatively short” means measured in months rather than years. Some of them are Small Silly Books, which seem to usually be humorous and fictional. Some of them are Small Serious Books, which seem to be mostly essay-oriented, or “creative nonfiction” if you must call it that. (I mustn’t.) Editing an anthology qualifies as a Small Book, and so does putting together a collection of your own previously published work. (Where an anthology or collection falls on the Serious/Silly spectrum depends on its content and style, naturally.)
Then there are Big Books. These are the ones that take a serious investment in every way, but most particularly in terms of time and effort. If it is somewhat more complicated and demanding than your average doctoral dissertation, it is fairly sure to be a Big Book, and that holds true whether it is fiction or nonfiction, and indeed Silly or Serious. (I am sure that there could be a Big Silly Book, although right now I am hard put to think of one.)
I wrote two Small Silly Books during and just after my work on the last Big Serious Book. I am currently toying with several other Small Silly Books, although none of them have really clicked in the way that drives me to hunker down and focus hard and write the whole thing, although I imagine any one of them could, if I put my mind to it. (Which I have not done due to the need to recuperate from the last Big Serious Book, and also because none of the present crop of Small Silly Books in progress are under contract at the present time.)
Anyhow, the next Big Serious book has begun to percolate, and while I’m loath to really get rolling with it or even discuss it too much publicly at this point (a proposal is out to my editors, I expect they will buy it, but nothing is definite yet), it is encouraging to be thinking about another Big Serious book. It’s even motivating me to work up a proposal for one of the current Small Silly Books, the one I think is most likely saleable, so that I can get it to my agent later in the week.
Weird but true: the Small Silly Books tend to grow better when they’re rooted in the mulch of a Big Serious Book. Small Silly Books taken on their own just get leggy and kind of sad-looking. I think I have too much of a didactic, professorial streak in me to write Small Silly Books on their own. If I don’t have a Big Serious Book going on that bleeds off the tweedy thinky explainy voice, it seeps into the Small Silly Books, where it just sounds out of place and sometimes condescending, and that’s no fun.
Back to work on that Small Silly Book proposal, then.
Permalink
11.06.06
Posted in Virgin book, good things, making book, squeeeee!, writing at 7:20 pm by Hanne Blank
I’m so excited I can hardly stand it — I’ve just gotten the ARCs (Advance Reading Copies) of Virgin in the mail.
For those who don’t know what an ARC is, it’s the first time in the process of a book’s production that you get to see the book as a physical book, typeset, bound, and with the relevant cover art. All prior incarnations are just stacks of loose pages of one sort or another. The ARC exists so that reviewers and distributors and bookstore representatives and so on can have a convenient book-shaped version of the book, even though it is not quite the same as the final version that’ll end up on the shelves. It is, if you will, the pre-book book.
I keep having to pick it up and open it to make sure it’s really real. After having worked on this book for basically all of the last four years, between research and writing and revision and the production process, it’s almost hard to believe that it’s finally… a real live book.
(It’ll be on the shelves in March 2007. You’ll just have to wait. But trust me, it looks really good.)
Oh, and while I’ve got your attention: if you’re American, and you’re eligible, do please go and VOTE tomorrow, won’t you? Need information on national issues or on your local candidates and/or ballot initiatives? Try The League of Women Voters — you can look up your state/regional chapter, which will have information on your individual state ballots, candidates, issues, etc.
I don’t mean to be partisan, or at least not too partisan, but: let’s throw the bums out. Time to play Put The Reins on the Cowboy, boys and girls!
Permalink
09.27.06
Posted in Virgin book, making book at 6:46 pm by Hanne Blank
As part of my site updates, I’m rolling out — partly as preview, partly as adjunct to the book as it will be when it is published — a set of pages that I’m calling Virgin on the Cutting-Room Floor. It consists of a number of more or less standalone excerpts from the original, thousand-and-one-page draft of Virgin: The Untouched History.
There are still a handful of excerpts that I have yet to put up and link. Those should be on the way tomorrow. But for now, there are 17 excerpts available, on topics ranging from how difficult virginity is to define (and what techniques get used to do it) to the medieval pope who sent all the nuns in Europe to their rooms permanently, and well beyond — 20th-century judges chastising young women for hanging out in Chinese restaurants because it presented a danger to their morals? Victorian lawsuits filed by wronged women against the men who promised them marriage in order to get into their pants? Christopher Columbus, kidnapper, rapist, and pimp? Kristy MacNicholl movies?
(Yeah, it’s a pretty diverse book. And this is the stuff I left out. Just wait until you see what I left in.)
Anyhow, go check it out if you have a chance. I’m actively soliciting translations of these excerpts, incidentally, and am posting them under a limited-use Creative Commons license for that purpose. If you’re inclined to do a translation of something, let me know — I’m happy to host your translations online if you don’t have a stable site of your own, too.
Permalink
09.22.06
Posted in arrrrgh, making book, writing at 4:52 pm by Hanne Blank
Proofreading galleys is one of the more miserable parts of being a writer. You spend as much time as you can stand, for days on end, sitting there with a stack of paper in your lap and a pencil in your hand, looking for things you screwed up. There are typos and punctuation errors, orthographic brainfarts, dangling prepositions, misplaced modifiers, number errors, and those weird places where you went in and removed some text but forgot to make the grammar of the resulting Frankensentence functional. You find that you have usage problems that make you consider looking for a methadone clinic, and tense shifts so completely crap that you figure you must’ve blown your clutch ’round about paragraph two. If you’re really lucky you’ll have written a book with a bibliography at the end, because it’s like having gravel soaked in engine oil for dessert: the nitpickiest, most form-dependent, least context-driven, and easiest-to-bollix bit for last, all its colons and semicolons and alphabetical orderings and italics and endless authors’ names that must be checked for correctness.
Proofreading galleys nearly always gives me headaches. I would blame them on simple eyestrain if I thought I could get away with it, but what’s really going on is that it’s an intensively self-critical process, stressful and trying. One learns from it–one had better–but the mounting evidence of one’s variegated pockets of ignorance and illiteracy is humbling, sometimes humiliating. There are a few mistakes, such as my evident inability to spell the word “foreign” correctly on the first try, or my penchant for using “which” when I should’ve used “that” and vice versa, that I’ve been making since the eighth grade, when Mr. Scott tried and failed to teach me better. It tends to make me feel puny and ineffective, and sort of stupid, like everyone else gets the joke but I have to have it explained to me. It also makes me distrust the people who tell me I turn in remarkably clean copy, a compliment I’ve gotten from more than a few editors: if this is clean, I shudder to think what they consider dirty.
The worst part of proofreading galleys, though, is seeing all the things you would’ve done differently and not being able to change them. By the time a book is in galleys, you’re not supposed to be rewriting. If you absolutely must change a word here or there, or reorganize a sentence that’s technically grammatical but has been puffing at the Dickensian hookah to a point that it takes even you two readings to parse it, you can do that. But altering much more than that means risking the wrath of your managing editor, and believe you me, given that this is the person who is responsible for making sure your book looks good when it hits the streets, this is not someone you want to have mad at you.
So instead you have to sift through countless infelicities. You realize your lamentable tendency to lean upon the progressive tense rather than grabbing the best and most active verbs you can find. Adjectives a thousand times more apposite than the ones you used leap to mind when you are proofreading just to torment you. The yearning for a machete with which to chop out modifiers and adverbs is so strong you can taste it. Just give me one more chance! you cry, womanfully resisting the temptation to stab yourself with your Bad Badtz Maru mechanical pencil, One more editing pass! I can make it all better!
But you don’t have one more editing pass. This is it. You have already crossed the auctorial Rubicon; the fact that you have your dirty little digits curled around the pages of your galleys is, in a very real way, hardly more than a courtesy on the part of your managing editor. You don’t get the luxury of making a whole book’s worth of cosmetic fixes. You only get to fix what is really truly broken.
During the galleys more than at any other time of the process of creating a book, I am aware that (as Elizabeth Bear so often says) every book is a broken book. It is the time when I get to see what I’ve learned about writing since I finished the draft, and, if I’m really lucky, I can think back to other books and compare my mistakes in this one to the mistakes I made with those. The goal isn’t to get to a point where I never make mistakes. The goal is to always make more interesting mistakes, a better class of errors… and to always make the next book a better book. But to get there, you have to know what kinds of crap happened this time. And there’s just no other way to get that awareness, or that perspective on your own writing, than sifting through the book sentence by sentence, clause by clause, verb by verb.
I did my best, and I finished combing through the galleys today, just in time for Rosh Hashanah to start. I timed it this way intentionally. Maybe it’s superstitious of me, but I want to be able to send this book back to New York as soon after the start of the New Year as I can, and whisper to it as I box it up: L’shanah tovah tikatev v’taihatem, may you be inscribed and sealed for a sweet and prosperous New Year.
And so may all of you! Good Yom Tov!
Permalink
Next entries »