History at Home: Montclair Ambulance Unit: A History in Pictures
Explore a history in pictures of Montclair Ambulance Unit (MAU) as they celebrate a 70-year history. In partnership, the Montclair History Center and MAU digitized MAU’s archival and artifact collection.
Founded in 1953, Montclair Ambulance Unit has provided 70 years of uninterrupted emergency medical service to the people of Montclair. While it began as an all-volunteer initiative, MAU is now staffed by 45 paid, professional emergency medical technicians (EMTs), operates four ambulances, and its crews are on duty around the clock at their current home in the historic, former Walnut Street fire house. When MAU was founded in 1953, only men were eligible to work on the ambulances! In the 1960s, when MAU faced staffing challenges, the "lady riders" stepped up to ensure that an ambulance got out the door when it was needed. Fast forward 70 years MAU is now staffed by more than half of whom identify as female or people of color.
This program was made possible by a grant from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, a state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.
COVID-19, Disability Justice, and Intersectionality in a "Post-Pandemic" World
This panel brought together activists and academics to discuss the importance of COVID-19 to disability justice and intersectional liberation. As a social phenomenon, the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare a range of systemic injustices in society, and as a disease, impacted marginalized people the most. However, since the near-universal end to precautions in 2022, these inequalities have fallen out of the national conversation. This panel highlighted the work of those who foreground the ongoing threat of COVID, particularly to marginalized groups, in their research and activism.
Moira Armstrong (Rutgers University, previously Birkbeck, University of London) was joined by Emily Krebs from Fordham University, Steven Thrasher from Northwestern University, and organizers of mask blocs in New Jersey and North Carolina.
This event was in celebration of the 2023 Birkbeck Gender and Sexuality Lynne Segal Prize, awarded yearly to graduate student work that shows excellent engagement with gender and sexuality in any discipline.