Cynthia Enloe's Visit

Cynthia Enloe is the most adorable speaker I think we've ever had at the Davies forum AND for my entire college career! She was so pleasant and seemed genuinely interested in our class; I didn't feel intimidated by her presence, but definitely felt her intelligence and knowledge from both her work and our discussion. I think she might be one of my favorite speakers to date!

Enloe's book, Nimo's War, Emma's War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War talked about the effects of war also including gendered dimensions in marriage, motherhood, women's sexuality, women's access to education and work. Her stories about the different perspectives and circumstances of women - from Nimo and her beauty salon to Charlene, the mother of a US serviceman, were eye-opening and informative about the different facets of the Iraq War. Like with Anu Bhagwati, I only had a minimal understanding of the Iraq War and its effects on women; I've learned about the Iraq War in my US Foreign Policy class, but we focused more on the systematic result of United States' approach.

Enloe's visit to our class, however, focused a little less on her book, but more on the concepts of writing and the reasons why she wrote the book, as well as the process. It was interesting to learn about her politics of choosing a title, as well as the way she retrieved information in order to write the perspectives of these women. I appreciated her insight into writing, as well as her explanation of her experiences in academia. I also loved how she divulged in how she got into feminist research in the first place - it was very humbling of her to admit that the chaos and unease of doing difficult research was common for anyone, even the experts themselves.