Aftermath: Feminism and the Militarization of Women

Tuesday, March 6, 2007
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
(Pacific)
Philippines Conference Room
Speaker: 
  • Cynthia Enloe,
  • Eli Painted Crow

Enloe and Painted Crow will discuss the implications of the militarization of women's lives in the context of the increasing escalation of US militarism. They will also dialogue about their views on various approaches to peace, bringing to bear their respective experiences as feminist-scholar and former-woman soldier. There will be an opportunity for audience members to participate in the roundtable discussion.

Cynthia Enloe

Cynthia Enloe, who grew up on Long Island and received a Ph.D. from the University of California/Berkeley, has served as chair of Clark's Government Department and Director of Women's Studies. Professor Enloe is currently a Research Professor in the Department of International Development, Community, and Environment (IDCE) and teaches the intensive seven-week seminar, "Gender, Militarization, and Development." She has been awarded Clarks "Outstanding Teacher of the Year" three times and has been named the University Senior Faculty Fellow for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship.

Enloe's feminist teaching and research has 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 governments' war-waging policies-- and how many women have tried to resist both of those efforts. Racial, class, ethnic, and national identities and pressures shaping ideas about femininities and masculinities have been common threads throughout her studies.

In recent years, Enloe has been invited to lecture and give special seminars on feminism, militarization, and globalization in Japan, Korea, Turkey, Canada, Britain and numerous colleges across the U.S. She has written for Ms. Magazine and Village Voice and has appeared on National Public Radio and the BBC. She serves on the editorial boards of several scholarly journals, including Signs and the International Feminist Journal of Politics. Among her nine books are: The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War (1993), Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (2000), Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives (2000 ), and The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in a New Age of Empire , (2004).

Eli Painted Crow

Eli Painted Crow, of the Yaqui Nation in Tucson, Arizona, is a mother of two sons who served in the military and has seven grandchildren. An army veteran of 22 years, she retired at the rank of Sergeant First Class E-7. She served assignments in Honduras in 1988 as an interpreter and communications specialist and in Kuwait and Iraq in 2004 as a Training NCO, Transportation NCO and Support Operations Sergeant.