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.
Blond Queens, Red Spiders, and Neurotic Old Maids: Gender and Espionage in the Early Cold War
Many books have been written about the male spies of the early Cold War, but the women have not received nearly as much attention. In part, this is because journalists at the time reduced these women to gender stereotypes and portrayed them as neurotic old maids or svelte young seductresses. This article examines the cases of Elizabeth Bentley, Priscilla Hiss, Ethel Rosenberg, and Judith Coplon. It analyzes the gender constructions used in the media coverage of these women, and argues that exploring these constructions is crucial to understanding the significance of these cases.
Black Women in Families: From Field to Factory@@@Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present.
The forces that shaped the institution of slavery in the American South endured, albeit in altered form, long after slavery was abolished. Toiling in sweltering Virginia tobacco factories or in the kitchens of white families in Chicago, black women felt a stultifying combination of racial discrimination and sexual prejudice. And yet, in their efforts to sustain family ties, they shared a common purpose with wives and mothers of all classes. In Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, historian Jacqueline Jones offers a powerful account of the changing role of black women, lending a voice to an unsung struggle from the depths of slavery to the ongoing fight for civil rights.