Department of Gender Studies

During her undergraduate program at the University of Chicago, Olivia Adams focused her studies on theories of authority, and wrote a BA thesis on Islamic authority, feminism, and scholar-activism in the United States. In addition to her thesis work, she also studied the medicalization of the body, feminist theory, and worked as a peer sex educator. Olivia plans to integrate her dual interests in authority and mainstream medicine’s effect on gender and sexuality norms through an investigation of sexual pain conditions and patient experiences of diagnosis and treatment. She is interested in the ways in which chronic pain patients challenge, dismantle, and at times reify a physician’s sense of medical authority.