Abstract Book of the 3rd Global Conference on Gender Studies
Year: 2025
[PDF]
Hysteria: Britney Spears’ Wandering Uterus
Emma Menard
ABSTRACT:
Hysteria: Britney Spears’ Wandering Uterus is a keyword literature review of hysteria as a diagnostic category and sociology-cultural phenomenon. The review analyzes hysteria through the lens of Disability Justice scholars, Gender Studies academics, psychologists, and political analysts in an attempt to create a wide-reaching keyword review of hysteria as it exists today. Hysteria as a term has a long and sordid history dating back to 1900 BC and continuing to the modern day. Hysteria has long been a tool to oppress women via their sexuality, physical, and mental health. Hysteria has served as a catch-all for women who react abnormally to abnormal conditions. Drapetomania, while not exclusively applied to women, serves as a perfect example of this with enslaved individuals who wanted freedom being deemed mentally ill. Hysteria has been the box that high-achieving women like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris are put into to silence them. The courts deemed Britney Spears to be hysterical after her 2007 public meltdown, and she was stripped of her rights. Multidisciplinary scholars have done important work to help us understand hysteria more fully. One thing is certain- hysteria is ever-evolving, ever-present, and always oppressive.
Keywords: drapetomania, keyword-review, mental-health, multi-disciplinary, oppression