Managing (Un)Feminine Bodies: Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome Patients’ Conceptions of Self and Illness
Dunahay Pereyra (Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology, UConn)
with a response by Camilo Ruiz (Anthropology, UConn)
Wednesday, October 28, 2026, 3:30pm, Humanities Institute Conference Room (HBL 4-209)
The event will also be livestreamed with automated captioning.
What are the social implications and medical narratives surrounding an under-diagnosed and under-studied reproductive chronic illness like polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), newly renamed Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (PMOS)? Using the case of PMOS, this dissertation critically examines the connections between societal values and perceived health/ability for those living with chronic illnesses, by drawing on narrative interviews with PMOS patients to illuminate how these patients make sense of the dimensions of their own illnesses in relation to their bodies and social worlds. Employing feminist social constructions of health and gender alongside theories of embodiment, this dissertation examines how medicalized knowledge as a form of power intimately shapes gendered illness identities and dominant meanings about bodies for people living with the chronic illness PMOS.
Dunahay Pereyra is doctoral candidate in Sociology at the University of Connecticut. Her research is situated at the nexus of medical sociology and the sociology of embodiment with a focus on lived experiences of chronic illness and disability, particularly for invisibilized chronic illnesses. Her doctoral dissertation utilizes qualitative narrative interviews with people diagnosed with polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome to understand the ways that social and medical knowledge and meaning are constructed for chronic illness patients, and how their social and reproductive futures are shaped by illness.
Camilo Ruiz is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut whose research bridges medical anthropology, public health, and participatory action research to address health inequities, migration, labor, armed conflict, and environmental justice across the United States and Colombia. His scholarship combines long-term ethnographic research with visual, artistic, and participatory methodologies, advancing community-engaged approaches that generate both academic knowledge and tangible public impact. His current research includes projects examining heroin use and methadone treatment in Colombia, collective healing through community arts, immigrant labor and wage theft in the United States, and participatory environmental research with Indigenous communities in the Colombian Amazon.
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