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Dec. 19, 2022
Covert Operations
We may think of military and war as strictly male pursuits - but governments and militaries all over the world spend a lot of man-hours strategizing about the different kinds of women they need to control to do the war-waging, as well as in preparat...
We may think of military and war as strictly male pursuits - but governments and militaries all over the world spend a lot of man-hours strategizing about the different kinds of women they need to control to do the war-waging, as well as in preparation for war and recovering from war, during so-called peace-time. As this episode's guest Cynthia Enloe puts it "they never want us to know they are strategizing about masculinity and femininity, but they're doing it all the time."
In episode 7, Elle has a sweeping conversation with award-winning research scholar Cynthia Enloe about her groundbreaking gender analysis of military, war and international politics, and how feminist politics have shaped national and international conversations.
An influential feminist thinker, spell-binding orator and author of fifteen books on women's roles in economic markets, world conflicts, and power politics, Cynthia unpacks the very processes by which we, and everything around us, unknowingly get feminized, masculinized and militarized - but more importantly - how we can resist, and even stop or reverse these covert socializations.
Cynthia Enloe links:
“Wounds,” International Politics, 2019
Where are the Women? Staying Curious about Gender in International Security
Institute of International Relations Prague Interview
The Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture
Credits
Host: Elle Kamihira
Produced by Elle Kamihira
Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio
Cover Art by Bee Johnson
Music by Beware of Darkness
Cynthia Enloe
Research Professor
Cynthia Enloe is 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, MA. Professor Enloe’s feminist teaching and research explore gendered politics nationally and internationally. Racial, class, sexual, ethnic and national identity dynamics, as well as ideas about femininities and masculinities, are common threads throughout her studies.
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.
Her career has included Fulbrights in Malaysia and Guyana, guest professorships in Japan, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Iceland, as well as lectures around the globe and at universities around the U.S. Her writings have been translated into multiple languages and she has been published in Ms. Magazine, The Village Voice, and has appeared on NPR, Al Jazeera, C-Span and the BBC.
Professor Enloe is the author of fifteen books, including Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives, The Curious Feminist, Nimo’s War, Emma’s War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War, Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link and The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging Persistent Patriarchy (2017)
A brilliant speaker, NPR chose Enloe’s Commencement speech at Connecticut College in 2011 as one of the 100 best US commencement addresses in the past century.
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