Elizabeth Bentley and cold war representation: Some masks not dropped
During the 1930s and 1940s Soviet intelligence operated spy rings within the United States. America Communist Elizabeth Bentley managed these networks until she defected to the FBI in 1945. Bentley's story of Communists in government ‐ the first of the Cold War — caused a public scandal. Some commentators, offended by Bentley's failure to fulfil traditional gender prescriptions, ridiculed her and shed doubts upon her story, which received less serious consideration than Whittaker Chambers’ similar tale. This article explores these criticisms, Bentley's attempts to counter them with her own public performances of traditional feminity, and, implicitly, gender's role in American Cold War politics.
Identifying the Traitor Among Us:The Rhetoric of Espionage and Secrecy
Espionage as a communication phenomenon is investigated through three recent case studies. Emphasis is placed on understanding intelligence and espionage as communication, but more importantly the discourses surrounding the label of espionage. These discourses are paradoxical, in that the heart of the discourse remains secret. Discourses about espionage are clearly persuasive. Indeed, the topic of espionage is the most socially prominent way in which modern American society negotiates issues about what properly counts as a secret, and what counts as treason. Yet here is the rhetorical challenge: how can the discourse be persuasive when the evidence itself must remain a secret? The results suggest that, contrary to traditional rhetorical expectations about the importance of evidence for persuasion, in the context of espionage the suppression of evidence is advantageous for persuasion. Secrecy itself is what sells. The discursive absence is highlighted, which in turn invites particular reading strategies. Audience expectations are activated, and a paranoid reading of overdetermined cues is invoked.
The Rising of the Women: Feminist Solidarity and Class Conflict, 1880-1917
Focusing on the socialist housewives, settlement workers, and left-wing feminists who were the main allies of working women between the 1880s and World War I, "The Rising of the Women" explores the successes and failures of the " united fronts" within which middle- and working-class American women worked together to improve social and economic conditions for female laborers. Through detailed studies of the Woman's Trade Union League, the Illinois Women's Alliance, the New York shirtwaist makers strike of 1909-10, and the 1912 textile workers strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Meredith Tax uncovers the circumstances that helped and hindered cross-class and cross-gender cooperation on behalf of women of the working class. In a new introduction to this first Illinois paperback edition, Tax assesses the progress of women's solidarity since the book's original publication."