Cynthia Enloe

Education

Ph.D. December 1967 University of California (Berkeley)
M.A. January 1963 University of California (Berkeley)
B.A. cum laude, June 1960 Connecticut College (New London)

Biography

Cynthia Enloe is a Research Professor in the Department of International Development, Community, and Environment, with affiliations with Women’s and Gender Studies and Political Science, all at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. 

Cynthia Enloe’s career has included Fulbrights in Malaysia and Guyana, guest professorships in Japan, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Iceland, as well as lectures in Sweden, Norway,  Germany, Portugal, Spain, Chile, Vietnam, Korea, Cambodia, Colombia, Bosnia, Turkey, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, and at universities around the U.S. Her writings have been translated into Spanish, Turkish, French, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Swedish, Czech, Icelandic and German. She has published in Ms. Magazine and The Village Voice and appeared on National Public Radio, Al Jazeera, C-Span, and the BBC.

 Professor Enloe’s fifteen books include Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives (2000), The Curious Feminist (2004) and Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War, (2010), The Real State of America: Mapping the Myths and Truths about the United States (co-authored with Joni Seager) (2011, revised 2014). Seriously! Investigating Crashes and Crises as if Women Mattered appeared in 2013. Enloe’s thoroughly updated edition of Bananas, Beaches, and Bases was published by University of California Press, 2014. Her updated edition of Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link was published in English and French in 2016.

Enloe’s The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging Persistent Patriarchy, is published in English, Japanese and Spanish. (Myriad Editions, UK; University of California Press, US, 2017)

Among her recent academic articles is “Wounds,” International Politics, 2019. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0047117819865999 

Cynthia’s lectures and interviews are available online via Google, podcasts https://www.owltail.com/people/ihNxz-cynthia-enloe/appearances and YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1NwZIfQW_Q

https://www.ipinst.org/2021/10/where-are-the-women-in-international-security

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDsX2dl9hn0 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQCbpGexPsU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRpGG6gsF4w

Selected Publications

The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging Patriarchy, London: Myriad; Berkeley; University of California Press, 2017

Bananas, Beaches, and Bases, throughly up-dated, revised edition, University of California Press, 2014.

"Seriously! Investigating Crashes and Crises as If Women Mattered," University of California Press, 2013.

"The Real State of America: Mapping the Truths and Myths of the United States," co-authored with Joni Seager, Penguin Books, 2012.

Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War, Berkeley and London, University of California Press, 2010.

Globalization and Militarism; Feminists Make the Link, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007. New, updated edition, 2016.

The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in The New Age of Empire, Berkeley and London, University of California Press, 2004.

"Conversation with Cynthia Enloe," in "Signs". Summer, 2003.

"Bananas, Beaches and Bases," Turkish edition. Summer, 2003.

Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives, Berkeley and London, University of California Press, 2000 (forthcoming in Turkish, Japanese and Korean, 2004)

The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War, Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1993 (published in Japanese, 1999)

Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, London: Pandora Press, Harper/Collins, 1989; Berkeley: University of California Press, January, 1990
*New edition with New Preface, Berkeley & London, University of California Press, 2000 (published in Turkish, 2003)

Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women's Lives, London, Pandora Press; San Francisco, Harper\Collins, 1988. (editions have been published in Finnish and Swedish).

Ethnic Conflict and Political Development, Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1973 Reprinted by University Press of America, 1986.

Coeditor (with Wendy Chapkis) Of Common Cloth: Women in the Global Textile Industry, Amsterdam: Transnational Institute; Washington: Institute for Policy Studies, 1983.

Contributor, Loaded Questions: Women in Militaries, Wendy Chapkis, editor, Amsterdam: Transnational Institute; Washington: Institute for Policy Studies, 1981.

Ethnic Soldiers: State Security in Divided Societies, London: Penguin Books, 1980; Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980.

Police, Military, Ethnicity: Foundations of State Power, New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1980.

Co-Editor, (with Dewitt Ellinwood), Ethnicity and the Military in Asia, New Brunswick: Transition Books, 1980.

Co-Author (with Guy Pauker and Frank Golay), Diversity and Development in Southeast Asia: The Coming Decade, New York: McGraw-Hill and Council of Foreign Relations, 1977.

Co-Editor (with Ursula Semin-Panzer), The Military, The Police and Domestic Order: British and Third World Experiences, London: Richardson Institute for Conflict and Peace Research, 1976.

The Comparative Politics of Pollution, New York: Longman's, 1975.

Multi-Ethnic Politics: The Case-of Malaysia, Berkeley Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1970.

Prizes established in honor of

The Cynthia Enloe Prize for senior undergraduate students excelling in women’s studies and community service, Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Clark University, created 2008

The Enloe Award for best manuscript submitted by an emerging scholar, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2010

The Cynthia Enloe Fellowship to support a doctoral student, Ph.D. Program, Gender Analysis in International Affairs, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, 2021

(* Note: Cynthia does not sit on any of these selection committees.)

Awards, Service, and Recognitions

Cynthia Enloe has been awarded Honorary Doctorates by Union College (2005), the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (2009), Connecticut College (2011), the University of Lund, Sweden (2012), Clark University (2014) and University of Iceland (2020).

 NPR chose Enloe’s Commencement speech at Connecticut College in 2011 as one of the 100 best US commencement addresses in the past century.

At Clark University, Cynthia Enloe has served as Chair of Political Science, the Director of Women’s Studies, and has been awarded Clark University’s Outstanding Teacher Award three times. 

She currently serves on the editorial advisory boards of International Feminist Journal of Politics, Security Dialogue, Women, Politics and Policy, International Political Sociology, Critical Military Studies, and Politics and Gender. She is a member of WILPF’s International Academic Network (wilpf.org).

 Professor Enloe’s feminist teaching and research explore gendered politics nationally and internationally, with special attention to how women’s labor is made cheap in globalized factories (especially sneaker factories) and how women’s emotional and physical labor is used to support governments’ war-waging policies—and how diverse women have tried to resist both of these efforts. Racial, class, sexual, ethnic and national identity dynamics, as well as ideas about femininities and masculinities, are common threads throughout her studies.

Cynthia Enloe was awarded the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award in 2007, in recognition of “a person whose singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and organizational complacency in the international studies community during the previous year.” 

In 2008, she was awarded the Susan B. Northcutt Award, presented annually by the Women’s Caucus for International Studies, of the International Studies Association, to recognize ”a person who actively works toward recruiting and advancing women and other minorities in the profession, and whose spirit is inclusive, generous and conscientious.” 

In 2010, Cynthia Enloe was awarded the Peace and Justice Studies Association’s Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award.  The American Council of Learned Societies invited awarded Cynthia to give its Annual Lecture and awarded her its Charles Haskins Award in 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRpGG6gsF4w

In 2018, Cynthia was awarded the Charles McCoy Career Achievement Award by the Committee for a New Political Science. In 2020, the International Security Studies Section of the ISA selected Cynthia as its Distinguished Scholar.

In 2017, Cynthia was selected as one the Honorees named on the Gender Justice Legacy Wall, installed in The Hague at the International Crimes Court.

In 2021, Cynthia was selected Distinguished Professor in International Relations by students and faculty at the University of Edinburgh.