Sneak Preview!

I'm delighted to let you know that a sneak preview of my forthcoming Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality is now up online for your reading pleasure!  Check it out here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/75045025/Straight-Introduction

Heterosexuality is not a fact of nature, it's a nineteenth-century invention, only about as old as the traffic light. In this surprising chronicle, historian Hanne Blank digs deep into the past of sexual orientation while simultaneously exploring its contemporary psyche. Illuminating the hidden patterns in centuries of events and trends, Blank shows how culture creates and manipulates the ways we think about and experience desire, love, and relationships between men and women. Ranging from Henry VIII to testicle transplants, Disneyland to sodomy laws, and Moby Dick to artificial insemination, the history of heterosexuality turns out to be anything but straight or narrow. With an eclectic scope and fascinating detail, Straight tells the eye-opening story of a complex and often contradictory man-made creation that is all too often assumed to be an irreducible fact of biology.

What are other people saying about STRAIGHT so far?


Review   Publishers Weekly - September 1, 2011

"From its thorough but brisk explorations of sexual orientation's intersections with sex, gender, and romance, this illuminating study examines our presuppositions and makes a powerful, provocative argument that heterosexuality—mazy, unscientific, and new—may be merely 'a particular configuration of sex and power in a particular historical moment.'"Quotes

"With impeccable research and detail, Hanne Blank uncovers the fascinating, often hidden, history of heterosexuality. Straight is a marvelous cultural history that is as entertaining as it is profoundly enlightening and necessary for understanding the world in which we live."—Michael Bronski, author of A Queer History of the United States

"Hanne Blank has rendered a meticulously researched romp through the history of 'heterosexuality'—that pesky orthodoxy still looming over Western culture like smog. Her sweeping synthesis takes on everything from Freud to Larry Craig, expertly weaving this untold history with insight and a refreshing dose of irreverence."—Lisa M. Diamond, author of Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women's Love and Desire

"What would it mean to dispense with our current categories of sexual identity? Writing with grace and wit, Hanne Blank demonstrates that what sounds like a radical proposition is also historically inevitable. This is a book that really shakes up an assumption or two!"—Laura Kipnis, author of How To Become a Scandal and Against Love

"Challenging our culture's deeply entrenched, stubborn assumption of heterosexuality, Straight helps us to think newly and critically. Starting from her own experience, Hanne Blank creatively analyses the unexamined idea that heterosexuality is given, unchanging, ahistorical."—Jonathan Ned Katz, author of The Invention of Heterosexuality and co-director OutHistory.org

The book hits the shelves on January 31, and will be debuting at the Creating Change conference in Baltimore on January 27 with a 90-minute intensive workshop on the book and the remarkable, little-known, fascinating history of heterosexuality.

Also, I am currently booking campus talks and guest lectures about STRAIGHT and the history of heterosexuality — feel free to pass this blog post along to anyone you know who might be interested in having me come and speak!