Japanese Lessons

Gail R. Benjamin is Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh and has taught at Saitama University and Tsukuba University in Japan. [Author Bio]

"A useful and engaging history of women in the British intelligence service during World War I. The book is an important contribution to the history of British intelligence and sheds light on the unglamorous reality of a highly romanticized aspect of women's work." -"American Historical Review", "How did women's work contribute to the propagation of war, and impact their own changing relation to the nation-state? How did women themselves, their contemporaries and popular culture represent their war work in gendered terms? Tammy Proctor addresses these significant questions in her intriguing study of women spies. As Proctor shows, women's substantial work for the developing British intelligence service belied the figure of the treacherous and seductive woman spy." -Angela Woollacott, author of "On Her Their Lives Depend: Munitions Workers in the Great War" "In "Female Intelligence", Tammy Proctor attempts to rescue female spies from cliches that classed them as either sexual predators or martyred virgins, manipulators or dupes, heartless vamps or emotional basket cases." -"New Yorker", "Retells forgotten stories and unearths new evidence of intrepid female field agents. . . . Proctor's archival discoveries hint at countless small acts of audacity and defiance. . . . Thanks to books like this one, the history of female espionage--from Aphra Behn to Elizabeth Van Lew to Lotus Blossum to Stella Rimington--is slowly being filled out." -"London Review of Books", "This engaging and intelligent study of women in espionage adds to our understanding of the experience of women during the First World War and of the legacy of their work, both mythic and real. Proctor carefully explores why the image of the female "spy seductress"--notably the iconic Mata Hari--has endured and uncovers the largely unknown history of this pivotal generation of women intelligence workers." -Susan R. Grayzel, author of "Women's Identities At War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War"