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Contents 1 Background 2 Important Writings 3 References 4 Other Writings

Born in 1938, Cynthia Enloe spent her early life in Long Island in a New York suburb. After completing her undergraduate education at Connecticut College in 1960 (which ironically had one of the highest rates of girls marrying amongst colleges in the American Northeast according to Enloe in “The Curious Feminist”), she went on to achieve first an M.A. in 1963 and then a Ph.D. in 1967 in the field of political science at the University of California, Berkley ^[1]. Enloe currently serves as a professor in the Department of International Development, Community, and Environment at Clark University, Worcester. She also fills the role of the Director of Clark University’s Women Studies program. Invitations to lecture on her favored topics of globalization, feminism, and militarization in Japan, Korea, Turkey, Canada, and Britain have distinguished her recent career in addition to appearances at Universities across the United States. She has also made appearances on National Public Radio and the BBC. In addition to serving as an editor for such scholarly journals as "Signs" and the "International Feminist Journal of Politics", Cynthia Enloe has written nine books to date, mostly published by the University of California Press. Much of Enloe’s research centers on women’s place in both national and international politics. Her books cover a wide range of issues encompassing gender-based discrimination as well as racial, ethnic and national identities.

In her works such as “The Curious Feminist”, Enloe pays particular attention to the effect of globalization on women’s labor and wage ratios. This book not only addresses women’s roles in economic markets, world conflicts, and power politics, but also shows Enloe’s particular interest in linking these themes to women’s everyday lives. Though “The Curious Feminist” addresses some similar themes to other writings such as “Bananas, Beaches, and Bases,” this book has the additional advantage of discussing how Enloe became interested in becoming a feminist. She asserts that curiosity as a feminist means that no woman’s life should be beyond the scope of her interest. She also particularly focuses on the influence of American culture on women of other nations and scrutinizes the masculine aspects of such familiar organizations as the United Nations and the American military. Within the text, a reader will find several illuminating interviews of Enloe which cast light on her thoughts and motivations for including various themes in her published works. These interviews also clarify some of her opinions. For instance, she explains that, though she views violence as fundamentally masculine, she does not view only men as perpetrators of violence ^[2]

“Bananas, Beaches, and Bases" presents sexism as a prevalent issue and gives readers a look at the history of such commonplace components of the modern world as the tourism industry. Enloe displays the links between women of very different cultures during the 1800s. Readers might find it interesting to read of how tourism for British women might not have existed as an acceptable undertaking. Yet, while these women maintained a stay-at-home pride, colonial women became stereotyped through such phenomenon as the World Fair, which used Social Darwinism to distinguish between the races based on levels of so-called intelligence and displays of “civilized” behavior. Enloe discussed colonialism in light of the typically-held perceptions of the masculine West and the feminine East. Discussing women from varied cultures, Enloe investigated how women such as those of the Muslim faith felt compelled to validate their cultural practices in the face of “Orientalism.” Her book argued that lack of understanding of foreign cultures and fascination with the differences in clothing and lifestyles of indigenous colonial populations contributed to their continued subjugation. Readers might be particularly interested by Enloe’s analysis of US companies using Carmen Miranda opening the door for the increased import of bananas from Latin America into the US by creating a popular image of the Latin American woman. The discussions of the abuses suffered by Latin American female workers in the fruit industry add a more serious note to follow the dialogue about the origins of the “Chiquita Banana” campaign. In “Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives” Enloe elaborates upon the theme of militarization and how governments utilize women’s labor in the process of preparing for and fighting wars. As she explains in her book, “Feminists from India, Zimbabwe, and Japan to Britain, the United States, Serbia, Chile, South Korea, Palestine, Israel, and Algeria all have found that when they have followed the bread crumbs of privileged masculinity, they have been led time and again not just to the doorstep of the military, but to the threshold of all those social institutions that promote militarization ^[3]

• Enloe, Cynthia. 2000. Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics. Berkely: University of California Press

• Enloe, Cynthia. 2004. The Curious Feminist: Searching for Women in The New Age of Empire. London: University of California Press

• Enloe, Cyntia. Research Profile for Cynthia Enloe Clark University Website. http://clarku.edu/academiccatalog/facultybio.cfm?id=343 (accessed March 27, 2007).

• Enloe, Cynthia. 2000. Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives. London: University of California Press

(As Listed on her faculty profile Clark University Website)

• "Conversation with Cynthia Enloe," in "Signs". Summer, 2003.

• The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War , Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1993 (published in Japanese, 1999)

• 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.