Cynthia Enloe

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)

Cynthia Enloe is a Research Professor in the Department of Sustainability and Social Justice at Clark University, and is affiliated with Clark's Women's and Gender Studies and Political Science Programs.

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 The Middlebrook/Djerassi Visiting Professor of Gender Studies at University of Cambridge, UK. She has presented lectures in 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, Turkish, French, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Swedish, Czech, Icelandic, Finnish, German and Chinese. 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, 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, and Spanish in 2022. Enloe’s The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging Persistent Patriarchy, is published in English, Japanese and Spanish. (originally: Myriad Editions, UK; University of California Press, US, 2017).

Her newest book is Twelve Feminist Lessons of War (London: Footnote Press; Berkeley: University of California Press) 2023. Audiobook: Read by the author: on Audible/Tantor. The Spanish edition of the book is published in 2024.

Among her recent academic articles is “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://www.kalw.org/show/your-call/2023-11-14/twelve-feminist-lessons-of-war

https://in.boell.org/en/media/audio/feminist-foreign-policy-during-war-and-peace-feminist-reflections-prof-cynthia-enloe

Among the videos on YouTube:

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 sit 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) 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 by governments to support their 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 2021, Cynthia was selected Distinguished Professor in International Relations by students and faculty at the University of Edinburgh.

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.