Talks

A “professional, warm, and all-around fabulous” public speaker, Hanne Blank is “funny, intelligent, and practical… a pleasure to hear!” Combining intellectual insight, a lifetime of professional performance skills, and a robust sense of humor, her talks enlighten and entertain. Hanne Blank’s approach to bodies, sex, and culture invites audiences to see complicated issues through her eyes as sources of delight and revelation.

Want to book a talk? Contact Soapbox, Inc.

Hanne will be happy to work with you to create a custom talk for your organization, campus, or classroom. Or choose from Hanne’s current list of available talks:

“Virgins and Other Indefinite Articles: Thinking Historically about Sexuality, Definition, and Experience”

Originally given at Harvard, this talk is an intimate look at the historian’s task in dealing with sexuality through the lens of Hanne Blank’s work on her two books Virgin and Straight. What intellectual and ethical traps does the historian face when working with difficult, frequently incomplete, politically and emotionally charged material, and how does the task of negotiating them shape the kind of books and narratives a historian can responsibly write?

“‘Mommy, Where Do Heterosexuals Come From?’ A Brief History of Sexual Orientation”

It’s almost impossible to imagine talking about sexuality without also talking about sexual orientation. But in reality, the idea that people possess something called a “sexual orientation” is a very modern idea, dating back only to around the turn of the 20th century. This whistle-stop tour of the different ways our ancestors thought and talked about sexual desires and practices sheds fascinating light on where contemporary ideas about sexual orientation come from, what they mean, and why it matters.

“Looking for Wrong in all the Love Places: How Western Sexuality Got A Sexual Orientation”

During the critical period from 1800-1950, the Western world learned to think about human sexual types along a distinctive and revealing trajectory. The political, social, and economic forces of modernity spurred the transformation of well-worn religious notions of sexual sin into new ideas of medical pathology and sickness. These in turn have gradually been reframed, through developing medical and technological thought, to become the concept of sexual orientation… yet old suspicions of sin, deviance, and disease continue to influence how we think, feel, and act. A more focused alternative to “‘Mommy, Where do Heterosexuals Come From?’.”

“Learning from Big Big Love: What A Decade of Talking to People about Weight and Sex Has To Tell Us About Bodies, Sexuality, and Happiness”

Hanne Blank has been talking to fat people about sex for the better part of fifteen years, and her groundbreaking book Big Big Love – now out in a brand new completely revised edition from Celestial Arts Press – has become a cult classic. Find out what she’s learned about resilience and creativity, rebellion and culture-building and much more, from hundreds of people of all sizes of large who have enormous, crucial things to teach us about our bodies, our sexuality, and our happiness.

Want to book a talk? Contact Soapbox, Inc. Sliding rates are sometimes available. Please ask if this is something you / your group needs.