Jon Coburn
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joncoburn.bsky.social
Jon Coburn
@joncoburn.bsky.social
Mediocre historian. University of Lincoln, UK
'Not Just a Housewife: Women Strike for Peace and the Cold War Women's Peace Movement' out October 2025

| Histories of activism | protest suicide | information literacy
Thanks Hilde!
November 23, 2025 at 9:58 AM
Thanks mate!
November 23, 2025 at 9:58 AM
Thank you! WSP was fascinating, I think there’s so much more to say about it - hopefully others can take it on!
November 23, 2025 at 9:57 AM
Thanks Malcolm
November 23, 2025 at 9:54 AM
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…
November 19, 2025 at 7:29 PM
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!
November 19, 2025 at 7:29 PM
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
November 19, 2025 at 7:29 PM
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
November 19, 2025 at 7:29 PM
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.
November 19, 2025 at 7:29 PM
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.
November 19, 2025 at 7:29 PM
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!
November 19, 2025 at 7:29 PM
Leveraging the moral authority of American motherhood to make a radical anti-militarist critique during the fraught years of the Cold War, WSP scored numerous successes and its activists were a constant feature of social movement activism from 1961-1990.
November 19, 2025 at 7:29 PM
Reposted by Jon Coburn
US term, document based questions.
Thinking of the US, have you seen this? www.inquirygroup.org/history-less...
History Lessons | Digital Inquiry Group
www.inquirygroup.org
November 16, 2025 at 11:48 PM
Reposted by Jon Coburn
It's the difference between centering the voices of enslaved and indigenous people and demonstrating how their inclusion shifts the traditional narrative and, as a result, forces viewers to rethink their own relationship to this story as opposed to utilizing them simply as window dressing.
November 17, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Reposted by Jon Coburn
"theft tech" is a term my pal @astra.bsky.social thought of just today when we were working on our book about these End Times Fascists.

We were thinking about what should happen when this this bubble busts, as we all know it will.

Remember: they have bunkers. We don't. 2/3
November 17, 2025 at 6:37 AM