Endometriosis, Psychiatric Gynecology, Reproductive Politics of Female Disorder

This talk examines the clinical machinery linking gynecology and psychiatry in the early- to mid-20th century, where chronic illness and reproductive pain were transformed into proof of female excess, deviance, instability, and disorder. Beginning with endometriosis and moving through hysteria, psychosurgery, institutionalization, and the reproductive violence of psychiatric confinement, Maria Rovito demonstrates how Western medicine has produced "difficult" women by casting them as pathological. Through the framework of "Mistresses of Mayhem," she brings feminist disability studies and reproductive justice together to ask what becomes possible when women labeled hysterical, malingering, and neurotic are built into our bones and refuse to stay buried.

Rovito (she/her) is a scholar and instructor of medical humanities at Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences where she teaches classes on reproductive justice, disability studies, and narrative medicine. She is the author of Cripping Endometriosis: Feminist Disability Histories and Reflections on Power and Pain (Palgrave, 2026).

Our Brown Bag series repeats every Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. These talks are catered, free, and open to all.