Cynthia Enloe
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Cynthia Enloe at Connecticut College, 2011
A commencement address about connection, curiosity, global responsibility, feminist attention, and the uneasiness that turns awareness into obligation.
Speech arc
- 01Alumna returns
Opening move
- 02Commencement archive
Speech beat
- 03Connections
Speech beat
- 04Uneasy awareness
Speech beat
- 05Clothing questions
Speech beat
- 06Global labor
Speech beat
- 07Responsibility
Speech beat
- 08Curious action
Final charge
Return: An alumna turns ceremony into inquiry
Enloe returns to Connecticut College as an alumna and scholar, using commencement not as simple reassurance but as an invitation to notice how ordinary lives are connected to distant people and systems.
Setting
The address sits in the college archive as the 93rd Connecticut College commencement speech.
Scholarship
Her public voice brings feminist international studies, development, labor, and everyday politics into the ceremony.
Move
The speech begins from connection rather than achievement, shifting attention outward from the graduate self.
Enloe returns to Connecticut College as an alumna and scholar, using commencement not as simple reassurance but as an invitation to notice how ordinary lives are connected to distant people and systems.
Attention: Connection should disturb the comfortable story
The central idea is that real connection is not sentimental. It makes the graduate aware of responsibility because another person's conditions now matter to one's own choices.
Unease
A useful connection changes the moral temperature of a familiar object or habit.
Responsibility
Awareness is treated as the beginning of obligation, not the end of reflection.
Past and present
Graduates are asked to link family, campus, history, and strangers they may never meet.
The central idea is that real connection is not sentimental.
It makes the graduate aware of responsibility because another person's conditions now matter to one's own choices.
Method: Ask who carries the risk behind ordinary goods
Enloe's most practical tool is curiosity: look at clothing, consumption, institutions, and ask what hidden labor, danger, and inequality make them possible.
Clothing
A shirt becomes a map of workers, prices, risks, and choices that are usually kept out of view.
Systems
The everyday object is political because it links comfort here to vulnerability elsewhere.
Questioning
Curiosity becomes a discipline for refusing easy innocence.
Enloe's most practical tool is curiosity: look at clothing, consumption, institutions, and ask what hidden labor, danger, and inequality make them possible.
• Key takeaways •
Connection creates obligation
Connects to connection.
Curiosity exposes hidden labor
Connects to feminism.
Ordinary objects carry politics
Connects to global responsibility.
Unease can be useful
Connects to labor.
Responsibility begins with attention
Connects to curiosity.
Closing charge
The closing charge asks graduates to keep making connections after commencement, even when those links complicate comfort and require action.
Use curiosity as a civic practice
Notice
Treat the ordinary world as evidence, not background.
Connect
Let connections expand the circle of concern beyond familiar people.
Act
Turn uneasiness into better questions, better choices, and more accountable work.
The closing charge asks graduates to keep making connections after commencement, even when those links complicate comfort and require action.
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Transcript
The full transcript is hosted by the original publisher. Commencement Archive links to the source rather than republishing copyrighted text.
Read the full transcript at source →Provenance
Imported from NPR commencement archive; cross-referenced with Open Commencement DB
NPR archive last updated in 2015; destination availability has not been exhaustively rechecked | Open Commencement DB transcript; not independently verified against the original recording
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