Jon Coburn

English lit - 6.4% unemployed

Maths - 7.5% unemployed

So kid, in your heart you want to study humanities but you worry about your job prospects? Let’s play a game.

On the latest data, who is more likely to be unemployed after 15 months after graduation. The English Lit grad or the Maths grad?

WRONG!

This is actually quite brilliant, up to and including the final sentence 🔥

Today is the 70th anniversary of Rosa Parks' arrest. Six myths: 1) She wasn't old or tired. 42 years old that day, she had a "life history of being rebellious" & had spent two decades helping to turn the Montgomery NAACP into a more activist branch alongside ED Nixon and Johnnie Carr.

“On the 70th anniversary of the Bus Boycott, Gray said the most important thing for people to do, aside from continuing to fight for civil rights, is for people to know their history, and use it to impact the future.”

www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/l...

Wrote this before threads on here about how “students today don’t read anything” blew up, and I stand by it.
It’s not only that every generation makes same complaint (I cant possibly know what other people’s students eg in US are like).

It’s more: what have we tried to do to help students read?

The death of browsing is part of the reason art is the way it is now. Our opinions are largely fed to us by algorithms. Spending a spare 15 minutes wandering around a bookstore or comic shop or video rental place was how you found stuff you wouldn't ordinarily pick up and thereby expanded your taste

Confronting conflicts: history teachers’ reactions to spontaneous controversial remarks

Participants recommended this @histassoc.bsky.social article: www.history.org.uk/publications...

But their vision of what 'really matters' to scholars seems to be a dematerialized, decontextualized, deinstitutionalized world of sans serif signifiers ready for (ugh) data viz. Meanwhile, paleographers are invited to stick around and refine the model to help ensure that their deskilling takes hold

Handing back student work that’s been written by ChatGPT with a 0 followed by the comment “This essay will never stand in authentic wonder before the Beauty of God’s creation.”

“While it’s fascinating that X actually rolled this out, it should raise questions about those who have spent the past few years stewing in that cesspool of foreign rage-bait manipulation, insisting it was somehow an accurate portrayal of public opinion.”

Thank you! I’m always very happy to do a guest lecture if there’s a need for it - also available for funerals, birthdays, and Bar Mitzvahs

The itinerary of this new wave of fascist deportations (Louisiana -> Barbados -> Equatorial Guinea) is the transatlantic slave trade in reverse, FYI

This is not the way, and @cnygren.bsky.social and I lay out in detail why it isn’t in this essay here. static1.squarespace.com/static/55577...

I don’t have to sell my soul, he’s already in me…

Thanks Hilde!

Thanks mate!

Thank you! WSP was fascinating, I think there’s so much more to say about it - hopefully others can take it on!

Thanks Malcolm

(5/7)

I wrote a few words about Mani for The Sunday Times - I didn’t know it would be behind a paywall, so here it is if you would like to read it:

(1/7)

This Day in Labor History: November 22, 1909. Approximately 20,000 garment workers in New York City went on strike against the horrendous conditions of their sweatshops. This strike, known as the Uprising of the 20,000, was the largest strike led by women in American history to that time!!!

In Not Just a Housewife, Jon Coburn shares the story of the radical activist group, Women Strike for Peace, who fused militant protests and motherhood. If you're shopping for an activist, use code HOILDAY at https://twp.ai/4isobZ to save 40% Coburn's book now! #readUP #gift #activist #peace

Wow.

There some big Country Joe McDonald energy going on here.

Not Just a Housewife: Women Strike for Peace and the Cold War Women’s Peace Movement is out now and available from University of Massachusetts Press, Waterstones, and probably anywhere else you like to get your books (maybe).

And it literally passes the smell test…

I have far too many people to thank for their patient support, indispensable advice, and generally life-affirming friendships. The acknowledgements section is incredibly long but by far the most important part of this book for me!

all of this, and more, forces a reconsideration of what maternal women’s peace activism was, and by extension, women’s peace movement history generally

For me, the highlights are capturing Alice Herz, and finally adding her back to the WSP story; reckoning with WSP’s associations with Black women peace activists; the activities of San Francisco WFP; and, for the first time, WSP’s experiences among the resurgence of antinuclear activity in the 1980s

Not Just a Housewife doesn’t just expand the story of WSP - it challenges traditional conceptions of maternal activist identity, the boundaries of peace and women’s issues, and the memory of Cold War-era social movement activism.

WSP was a much more radical, militant, and politically-charged group of people. It’s activities stretched further and impacted more than was recognised.

But to reckon with this complexity means challenging the very stories that WSP activists told about themselves.

However, maternal peace protest also drew criticism - Betty Friedan famously rebuked WSPers for maintaining that they were “just a housewife” and urged them instead to make their political stance “as citizens.”
As I show in the book, all of this history is, of course, much more complex!