Dr. Jennifer Greenburg
Assistant Professor, International Relations 
University of Sheffield

In Person Only (no Zoom):
GUGG 205
Sep 29, 2023, 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM

Abstract

This talk will focus on the argument and findings of Jennifer Greenburg’s new book, At War with Women, which examines how the post-9/11 politics of gender and development have transformed US military power. Based on ethnographic fieldwork observing US military trainings during the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, At War with Women investigates how the military translated development into a counterinsurgency weapon. After tracing the post-9/11 militarization of development through its colonial history, this talk will specifically focus on how military strategy depended on new forms of women’s labor. Despite women technically being banned from combat during these years, in practice they were deployed on all-female counterinsurgency teams to access Afghan women and their households. The military framed these women as “emotional experts of war” who could calm and soothe the victims of night raids or counsel male soldiers. This talk will interrogate how such gender meanings are part of a new imperial feminism that is central to understanding US hegemony today.

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