Lecturer, Medical Humanities & Bioethics
Lecturer, Global Health Studies
AOSC Thesis Advisor, Medical Humanities, Human Sexuality InterestsWomen’s sexual and reproductive health and reproductive science and medicine since the late 19th century, and how history frames current discourse on these topics; contemporary issues in women’s reproductive and sexual health, both nationally and internationally.
BiographySarah Rodriguez attended the University of Iowa for her BA in American Studies, the University of Wisconsin-Madison for her MA in the History of Science and Medicine, and the University of Nebraska Medical Center for her PhD in Medical Sciences, Preventive and Societal Medicine. She teaches in both the Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program in the Feinberg School of Medicine as well as in the Global Health Studies Program in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. Additionally, Rodriguez is the thesis advisor for the new Area of Scholarly Concentration (AOSC) in FSM for the areas of Medical Humanities and for Human Sexuality.Her scholarly work focuses on women’s sexual and reproductive health. She converted part of her dissertation, on the history of female circumcision and clitoridectomy in the United States since the mid-19th century as medical therapy, into an article that appeared in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (July 2008). She conducted significant new research while revising her entire dissertation into a book tentatively titled The Errant Organ: Female Sexuality, the Clitoris, and the Medical Indications for Female Circumcision and Clitoridectomy in the United States, 1865-2012. Currently, she is working on a history of Ohio gynecologist James Burt, who operated on the genitalia of (largely unknowing) women from the 1960s through the 1980s. A portion of this research appears in a forthcoming article in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. As an extension of and compliment to this work, she is beginning research on the history of episiotomy repair in the United States since 1950. Rodriguez is also researching the history of women’s health activism in the 1970s, in particular the self-help gynecology movement. In addition to her independent research, Rodriguez is also a collaborative scholar. A component of the research she presented at the American Association for the History of Medicine in 2010 on early twentieth century ovarian transplantation recently appeared in an article in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (Summer 2011), an article she co-wrote with bioethicist Lisa Campo-Engelstein. In addition, an article by Rodriguez and Campo-Engelstein, “Two Chicks in a Lab with Eggs” (May-June 2011), was one of eight chosen by the Hastings Center Report from 200 submitted to their call for papers on new issues in bioethics for the Hasting Center’s 40th anniversary. Rodriguez has also recently had co-authored articles in Science, American Journal of Bioethics, Science and Public Policy, Journal of Law, Medicine, and Ethics, another article in the Hastings Center Report, and one forthcoming in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Rodriguez received a Foundation for the History of Women in Medicine Fellowship in 2010-2011 to do archival work regarding the bench scientist Miriam Menkin at the Center for the History of Medicine, Archives for Women in Medicine, at Countway Medical Library at Harvard. Menkin, along with Dr. John Rock, published on the first human IVF in the 1940s. She presented this work at the AAHM in 2011, and has an article out for consideration. She also received a Sexualities Project at Northwestern grant in 2011 for her work on James Burt as well as in 2012 for her work on the history of episiotomy repair. Contact Info312-503-2887
srodriguez@northwestern.edu
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