This book argues for reframing endometriosis as a chronic pain condition, rather than an infertility issue. Drawing from feminist theory, disability studies, historical and archival research, and personal, embodied knowledge of living with the disease, it analyzes the deeply rooted misogyny and racism of Western medicine’s research and treatment of endometriosis as a “career woman’s disease”—a framing which demonizes women’s reproductive choices and focuses on gender roles rather than their pain, experience, and agency. Offering a unique lens through which we can re-examine broader issues of autonomy, authority, and agency within the healthcare system, it will appeal to scholars in gender studies, disability studies, medical humanities, feminist studies, and the history of gynecology, as well as women’s health advocates and healthcare practitioners.
By:
Maria Rovito
Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan
Country of Publication: Switzerland
Dimensions:
Height: 210mm,
Width: 148mm,
ISBN: 9783032156808
ISBN 10: 3032156807
Pages: 254
Publication Date: 17 February 2026
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Chapter 1. (Shock) Entering the Labyrinth: Traversing Feminism, Disability, and the Politics of Endometriosis.- Chapter 2. (Denial) Infertility as Failure: Eugenics, Hysteria, and the Medicalization of Endometriosis, 1861-1949.- Chapter 3. (Anger) The Cycle of Pain: Endometriosis, Medical Racism, and the Violence of Gynecological Knowledge.- Chapter 4 (Bargaining) Cut Her Open: Endometriosis, Feminine Monstrosity, and the Televised Deformed Body.- Chapter 5. (Reconstruction) Pain Is a Sentence, and I Am Its Author: Embodied Knowledge, Rhetoric, and the Language of Endometriosis.- Chapter 6. (Depression) I Became My Own Enemy: Pain, Endometriosis Memoirs, and the Rhetoric of a Battle to Stay Alive.- Chapter 7. (Acceptance) This Is the Part Where I Refuse to Die: Narrating Endometriosis Against the Silence.- Chapter 8. (Love) I Loved Myself Back to Life: Theorizing the Poetics of Feminist Fury, Endometriosis, and Female Empowerment.
Maria Rovito is Instructor of Medical Humanities at Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, USA and an active public intellectual.
