Speaker: Professor Cynthia Enloe, Clark University

Chair: Professor Marsha Henry, Queen’s University Belfast

This Lecture will explore how and why military recruiters - in Myanmar, Fiji, UK, Russia, Ukraine, US - wield popular hopes and anxieties about "manliness" to build their forces.  Feminists have shown that governments depend on (and worry about!)  women in their often-failed efforts.

Professor Cynthia Enloe

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.

Professor Enloe’s feminist teaching and research explore gendered politics nationally and internationally, with special attention to how women’s labour is made cheap in globalised factories (especially in sneaker factories) and how women’s emotional and physical labour is used by governments to support their war-waging policies and how diverse women have tried to resist 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.

Her 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 across the world and her writings have been translated into several languages.

She has published in Ms. Magazine and The Village Voice and appeared on National Public Radio, Al Jazeera, C-Span and the BBC.

Professor Marsha Henry

Professor Marsha Henry is the Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton Chair in Women, Peace, Security and Justice.  Her research is concerned with the gendered and racialised politics of violence; militarisation; global south development; international aid and intervention; and conflict, peace, and security.  She is the author of several books, the latest of which is: The End of Peacekeeping:  Gender, Race, and the Martial Politics of Intervention (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024).

Marsha has also advised a number of national governments on women’s participation in the armed forces, combatting sexual exploitation and abuse in humanitarian settings, and developing anti-racist and diversity strategies in foreign policy ministries.

This event is hosted in partnership with the British International Studies Association (BISA) and the Centre for Gender in Politics, Queen’s University Belfast.