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 Research Professor of Political Science in the Department of Sustainability and Social Justice, with affiliations in 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. In 2022, Cynthia served as The Middlebrook/Djerassi Visiting Professor of Gender Studies at University of Cambridge, UK. She has presented lectures in Japan, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Chile, Vietnam, Korea, Cambodia, Colombia, Bosnia, Turkey, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Austria, Finland, Ukraine and at universities around the U.S. Her writings have been translated into Ukrainian, Spanish, Bosnian, Arabic, Turkish, French, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Swedish, Czech, Icelandic, Finnish, German and Chinese.
Cynthia 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, revised 2014); Seriously! Investigating Crashes and Crises as if Women Mattered, 2013. Enloe’s thoroughly updated edition of Bananas, Beaches and Bases was published by University of California Press, 2014. “Bananas” has been published in French (2024), Chinese, (2025) and Turkish (2026). Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link was published in English and French in 2016, in Spanish in 2022. Enloe’s The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging Persistent Patriarchy, is published in English, Japanese and Spanish. (original: Myriad Editions, UK; current: University of California Press, US, 2017).
Her latest book is Twelve Feminist Lessons of War (London: Footnote Press; Bonnier Books UK; in the US: Berkeley: University of California Press) 2023. Spanish edition: 2024; Finnish edition, 2024; French and Turkish editions, 2025. Audiobook/Read by the author/ Available on Audible; onTantor.
Among prominent academic articles: “Wounds,” International Politics, 2019. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0047117819865999
Cynthia’s lectures, podcasts, and interviews are available on-line via Google:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/where-are-the-women-really/id1324629357?i=1000658425162
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/where-are-the-women-really/id1324629357?i=1000658425162
https://www.kalw.org/show/your-call/2023-11-14/twelve-feminist-lessons-of-war
https://www.owltail.com/people/ihNxz-cynthia-enloe/appearances
Among the videos online:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvLl2pS-G7s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZmfEMP0qDk
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
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, created 2010.
The Cynthia Enloe Fellowship to support a doctoral student, PhD Program, Gender Analysis in International Affairs, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, created 2023.
(* Note: Cynthia does not serve on the selection committees for any of these prizes.)
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 (SOAS) (2009), Connecticut College (2011), the University of Lund, Sweden (2012), Clark University (2014), University of Iceland (2020), St Andrews University, Scotland (2025).
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, 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 both 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 by governments to support their war-waging policies—and how diverse women have resisted each 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 2021, Cynthia was selected Distinguished Professor in International Relations by students and faculty at the University of Edinburgh.
In 2025, the British International Studies Association (BISA) chose Cynthia to deliver the opening keynote lecture for its 50th anniversary conference, Belfast, UK.
In 2017, Cynthia was selected as one of the Honorees named on the Gender Justice Legacy Wall, installed in The Hague at the International Crimes Court.
Addendum
“Laureation for Cynthia Enloe,” Written and presented at University of St Andrews, Commencement on July 1, 2025,
by : Professor Anthony Lang
School of International Relations, University of St Andrew, St Andrews, Scotland, UK :
++Professor Anthony Lang: Vice Chancellor, it is my privilege to present for the Degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, Professor Cynthia Enloe. Professor Enloe is a scholar and teacher of International Relations who has brought her ‘feminist curiosity’ to the multiple forms of militarism that shape our global system. Her rich empirical work and theoretical sophistication have resulted in 15 books, numerous articles and chapters, and a reputation as the most important feminist thinker in International Relations. She is the recipient of multiple awards and honorary degrees, ranging from SOAS to the University of Iceland (and now from us), and three different prizes have been established in her name. Her works have been translated into numerous languages, including Ukrainian, Japanese, Turkish, and Chinese, to name only a few.
Yet it is not just her publications and honorifics that merit our attention. Professor Enloe has long been a tireless teacher of and advocate for students and junior scholars. As one example, soon after I completed my PhD in the late 1990s, I coauthored a short paper using Professor Enloe’s work, which I posted to her. Even though my work does not focus directly on feminism, Professor Enloe responded immediately, and has been a support and friend throughout my career, reading some of my later work and giving me insights into how to better incorporate the ‘feminist curiosity’ for which she has become so well known. And, when she came to St Andrews in 2017 to deliver the School of International Relations Distinguished Scholar Lecture, Professor Enloe spent two days meeting with academic members of staff, PhD students, and other students to discuss their work and encourage them in their thinking about global politics. Her lecture, in the midst of the first administration of Donald Trump, given without notes to a standing room only audience, gave those who attended hope for how we might see the role of the United States differently, again using that feminist curiosity to highlight an alternative way of doing politics, both domestically and globally.
She is not only a scholar, but an activist and organizer, one who has worked with feminist colleagues around the world to better understand the too often ignored contributions that women make in their efforts to counter militarism. In her most recent book, Twelve Feminist Lessons of War, Professor Enloe captures, I think, the essence of how her approach to being a scholar and activist, when she writes the following: “Feminists working to prevent or end wars in so many countries need us to be in solidarity with them. They are teaching us, though, that to be in genuine solidarity calls for our sustained curiosity. We need to put ourselves in other girls’ and women’s shoes. It is not enough even to be sympathetic. To become feminist in our efforts at solidary, we need to learn about each other’s gendered histories, each other’s gendered economies, each other’s gendered hopes and worries.”
Professor Enloe, throughout her distinguished career, has done exactly that: made us aware of the gendered dynamics of world politics. She creates that solidarity in so many of her works, connecting women’s struggles across time and space. As just one small example, her 2010 book, Nimo’s War, Emma’s War, tells the story of how an Iraqi and American woman were both impacted by the gendered dynamics of the 2003 Iraq War. The book refuses to make the war a battle between good and evil, but, instead, opens us to the impact this war and so many others have had on the lives of women. In a field of study often defined by war, trade, and conflict, she has helped us see how those traditional practices rely on and sustain assumptions about gender. Thank you from all of us who have tried to understand global politics for revealing the global politics of patriarchy, and, even more importantly, giving us the tools by which we might counter such practices in our thinking and our actions.
Vice Chancellor, in recognition of her major contribution to feminist theory and practice in global politics, I invite you to confer the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, on Professor Cynthia Enloe.