- About IDCE
Cynthia Enloe, Ph.D.
Research Professor of International Development and Social Change and Women's Studies
- 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)
The interactions of feminism, women, militarized culture, war, politics, and globalized economics in countries such as Japan, Iraq, the U.S., Britain, the Philippines, Canada, Chile, and Turkey
Cynthia Enloe is currently Research Professor in the International Development, Community, and Environment Department at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Cynthia Enloe’s career has included Fulbrights in Malaysia and Guyana, and guest professorships in Japan, Britain and Canada, as well as lecturing in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Germany, Korea, Turkey and at universities around the U.S. Her books and articles have been translated into Spanish, Turkish, Japanese, Korean, Swedish, and German. She has written for Ms. Magazine and has appeared on National Public Radio, Al Jazeera and the BBC.
Among Professor Enloe’s thirteen books are Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (2000), Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives (2004), The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in The New Age of Empire (2004) and Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link (2007). In 2010, she published Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War. Her newest book (co-authored with feminist geographer Joni Seager) is: The Real State of America: Mapping the Myths and Truths about the United States (2011).
In 2009-10 she was awarded Honorary Doctorates from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and Connecticut College. In May, 2012, she was awarded a Honorary Doctorate by the University of Lund, Sweden.
At Clark University, Cynthia Enloe has served as Chair of the Department of Political Science and as Director of Women’s Studies. Among the several committees on which she has served have been the university’s Committee on Personnel and the Planning and Budget Review Committee. Professor Enloe was awarded Clark University’s Outstanding Teacher Award three times. She currently serves on the editorial boards of five academic journals, including International Feminist Journal of Politics, Security Dialogue and International Political Sociology.
Professor Enloe’s feminist teaching and research have focused on the interplay of women’s politics in the national and international arenas, 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 has been used to support many governments’ war-waging policies—and how diverse women have tried to resist both of those efforts. Racial, class, ethnic and national identities as well as pressures shaping 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 Enloe Award, created in 2009 by the Editors of the International Feminist Journal of Politics, is awarded annually to recognize (and publish) a manuscript of exceptional quality submitted by an emerging scholar.
Enloe received the Susan B. Northcutt Award, 2008, selected and 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.”
Enloe received the Susan Strange Award, International Studies Association, selected by the current and incoming ISA Presidents, 2007, to recognize “a person whose singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and organizational complacency in the international studies community during the previous year.”
Enloe, Cynthia. The Real State of America Atlas : Mapping the Myths and Truths of the United States. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011.
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.
The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in The New Age of Empire, Berkeley and London, University of California Press, 2004.
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.