"From ""Career Woman's"" Disease to ""An Epidemic Ignored"": Endometriosis in United States Culture Since 1948"
Sanmiguel, Lisa Michelle
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/86621
Description
Title
"From ""Career Woman's"" Disease to ""An Epidemic Ignored"": Endometriosis in United States Culture Since 1948"
Author(s)
Sanmiguel, Lisa Michelle
Issue Date
2000
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Treichler, Paula A.
Department of Study
Communications
Discipline
Communications
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Health Sciences, Public Health
Language
eng
Abstract
"In my dissertation, I argue that changes in the incidence and cultural significance of endometriosis must be understood historically in relation to a complex web of interests, practices, and policies that have shaped knowledge about the disease. Endometriosis has been formed and re-formed in and through struggles over meaning involving diverse constituencies, including scientists, physicians, corporations, advocates, and/or women with the disease. Focusing on representations of endometriosis in biomedical, mass media, and advocacy texts since 1948 (the year in which the disease first appeared in popular literature), I trace social, cultural, and historical developments that have contributed to current ways of defining, representing, and understanding the disease. To explore the rise of the endometriosis ""epidemic,"" I offer a genealogical analysis of disease discourses that combines a close reading of a range of cultural texts with an analysis of cultural practices and institutions. I embrace a multi-theoretical perspective in my work, basing my analysis in feminist poststructuralist, feminist cultural studies, and social constructionist approaches to gender, the body, technology, and disease. My dissertation illuminates the vast array of meanings and definitions that have been attached to endometriosis in the last 50 years, emphasizing ways in which linguistic constructions have influenced the diagnosis, treatment, and/or lived experience of the disease."
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