Mab Segrest

{{Infobox person

| name = Mab Segrest

| image = Mab Segrest 2016.jpg

| caption = Segrest in 2016

| birth_name = Mabelle Massey Segrest

| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1949|2|20}}

| birth_place = Tuskegee, Alabama, U.S.

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| nationality = American

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| notable_works = Memoir of a Race Traitor

| education = Duke University (PhD)

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| occupation = Scholar, Writer

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Mabelle Massey Segrest, known as Mab Segrest (born February 20, 1949), is an American lesbian feminist, writer, scholar and activist associated with the American South. Segrest is best known for her 1994 autobiographical work Memoir of a Race Traitor, which won the Editor's Choice Lambda Literary Award. Segrest is the former Fuller-Matthai Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at Connecticut College.

Career

In the 1970s, Segrest moved to North Carolina to attend Duke University, where she earned her PhD in English literature in 1979. While studying at Duke, and for several years thereafter, she taught English at nearby Campbell University. In 2002 Segrest began teaching at Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut as a Visiting Assistant Professor and Chair of the Gender and Women's Studies Department.{{Cite web |title=Teaching, 1979-2014 - Archives & Manuscripts at Duke University Libraries |url=https://archives.lib.duke.edu/catalog/segrestmab_aspace_8a68b66f758b4a8be4fb216be9a345b1 |access-date=2024-03-28 |website=David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library |language=en}} In 2004 she was appointed the Fuller-Matthai Professor of Gender and Women's Studies. She was a Mellon Distinguished Professor at the Center for Research on Women at Tulane University in 2004. From 2009-2010, Segrest was a Fellow at the James Weldon Johnson Institute for Civil Rights at Emory University. In 2015 she served as the Martha Daniel Newell Scholar in Residence at Georgia College & State University. She retired from teaching in 2014.{{Cite web|url=https://www.conncoll.edu/directories/emeritus-faculty/mab-segrest/|title=Mab Segrest|website=Connecticut College|language=en|access-date=2019-09-17}}

Social activism

Segrest has founded, served on the boards of, and consulted with a wide range of social justice organizations throughout her life and is a recognized speaker and writer on issues of sexism, racism, homophobia, classism, and other forms of oppression. In the mid 1980s, Segrest helped to form NCARRV (North Carolinians Against Racist and Religious Violence) with Christina Davis-McCoy.{{Cite web |title=Activism, 1969-2014 - Archives & Manuscripts at Duke University Libraries |url=https://archives.lib.duke.edu/catalog/segrestmab_aspace_65445eaad79bac5e50cd12244f54dcc1 |access-date=2024-03-28 |website=David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library |language=en}} From 1983 to 1990, Segrest worked with NCARRV, for which she is credited by many for ridding North Carolina of the Ku Klux Klan. From 1986-1997 she served on the board of the Center for Democratic Renewal, which was founded in 1979 as the National Anti-Klan Network by C.T. Vivian and Anne Braden. From 1992 to 2000 she served as coordinator of the Urban-Rural Mission (USA), part of the URM network of the World Council of Churches.

Writing

Until it disbanded in 1983, Segrest was a member of the Southern feminist writing collective Feminary, which also produced a journal of the same name.{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=U4EgNp4IOQAC&pg=PA434 |page=434 |first=Becky W |last=Thompson |title=A promise and a way of life: white antiracist activism |year=2001 |publisher=University of Minnesota Press |isbn=0-8166-3634-6 }} Feminarians, including Segrest, saw writing as a force for political change, and the journal maintained a Southern feminist focus and was anti-sexist, anti-racist, anti-homophobic, and anti-classist.Powell 100–101

Through the collective and other activist work, Segrest generated material for her first book of essays, My Mama's Dead Squirrel.

Her book narrating her experience working against the Klan with North Carolinians Against Racist and Religious Violence (NCARRV) is Memoir of a Race Traitor, published by South End Press in 1994. It was named an Outstanding Book on Human Rights in North America and was Editor's Choice for the Lambda Literary Awards.{{Cite web|url=https://www.lambdaliterary.org/winners-finalists/07/14/lambda-literary-awards-1994/|title=7th Annual Lambda Literary Awards|last=Cerna|first=Antonio Gonzalez|date=1995-07-15|website=Lambda Literary|access-date=2019-09-17}} Memoir of a Race Traitor was hailed by Howard Zinn as "extraordinary . . . It is a 'political memoir,' but its language is poetic and its tone passionate."[https://web.archive.org/web/20061001222742/http://www.southendpress.org/2004/items/RaceTraitor] South End Press It is considered a key text in white studies and anti-racist studies. In this work, Segrest outlines her definition of "queer socialism," which is how she defines her political stance. This version of socialism demands a more caring world where all citizens are taken into consideration when resources are allocated and opportunities are dispensed. She says that while there is no blueprint as yet for this form of socialism, it would be based in feminist theory and practice. It was re-released in 2019 by The New Press.{{Cite book|url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/mab-segrest/memoir-of-a-race-traitor/|title=MEMOIR OF A RACE TRAITOR by Mab Segrest {{!}} Kirkus Reviews|language=en}}

Segrest's book, Born to Belonging: Writings on Spirit and Justice was published in 2002 and recounts her experiences in activism around the world. Segrest co-edited Sing, Whisper, Shout, Pray: Feminist Strategies for a Just World (2003) with M. Jacqui Alexander, Lisa Albrect and Sharon Day.

Segrest was awarded a fellowship at the National Humanities Center to support the writing of her Administrations of Lunacy: Racism and the Haunting of American Psychiatry at the Milledgeville Asylum on the history of the Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia. This book was published in 2020 by The New Press.{{Cite web |title=Administrations of Lunacy |url=https://thenewpress.com/books/administrations-of-lunacy |access-date=2024-03-27 |website=The New Press |language=en}}

In popular culture

Founding Riot grrrl band Le Tigre mention Segrest's name in their 1999 single "Hot Topic," from their debut album Le Tigre. In listing important feminist figures, lead singer Kathleen Hanna described the song as "analogous to a college syllabus".Chute, Hillary (December 28, 1999). "More, more, more". The Village Voice. 44 (51). Retrieved November 2, 2014.

Segrest was portrayed by Staci Jacobson in the 2016 stage play The Integration of Tuskegee High School. The production premiered at Auburn University and dramatized Segrest's time as a student during the 1963-1964 school year in her hometown of Tuskegee, Alabama.{{cite web |url=http://ocm.auburn.edu/newsroom/news_articles/2016/04/the-integration-of-tuskegee-high-school-lee-v.-macon-county-board-of-education-opens-april-14-at-auburn-university.htm |title='The Integration of Tuskegee High School: Lee v. Macon County Board of Education' opens April 14 at Auburn University |author=Dyleski, Taylor |pages= |date=April 2016 |accessdate=2013-05-23 |quote= |publisher=Auburn University }}

Publications

[https://search.worldcat.org/title/11231404 Living in a House I Do Not Own] (Night Heron Press, 1982)
[https://search.worldcat.org/title/12556599 My Mama’s Dead Squirrel: Lesbian Essays on Southern Culture] (Firebrand Books, 1985)
[https://search.worldcat.org/title/1112153116 Memoir of a Race Traitor] (South End Press, 1994; re-released The New Press, 2019)
[https://search.worldcat.org/title/48941812 Born to Belonging: Writings on Spirit and Justice] (Rutgers University Press, 2002)
[https://search.worldcat.org/title/50809138 Sing, Whisper, Shout, Pray: Feminist Strategies for a Just World] (Edgework Books, 2003), M. Jacqui Alexander, Lisa Albrecht, Sharon Day, and Mab Segrest, editors
[https://search.worldcat.org/title/1151271598 Administrations of Lunacy: Racism and the Haunting of American Psychiatry at the Milledgeville Asylum] (The New Press, 2020)

References

External links

[https://mabsegrest.com MabSegrest.com]
[https://www.conncoll.edu/directories/emeritus-faculty/mab-segrest/ Mab Segrest, Fuller-Maathai Professor Emeritus of Gender and Women's Studies at Connecticut College]
[http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/findingaids/segrestmab/ "Guide to the Mab Segrest Papers," Duke University]
[http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/5e66b3e9-0a1d-d471-e040-e00a180654d7 "Mab Segrest with Barbara and Annie. Durham, NC," 1991], photograph in "Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers" by Robert Giard at the New York Public Library.

Category:1949 births

Category:American feminists

Category:American educators

Category:Anti-classism

Category:Living people

Category:Duke University alumni

Category:Lambda Literary Award winners

Category:20th-century American writers

Category:21st-century American writers

Category:20th-century American women writers

Category:21st-century American women writers

Category:LGBTQ people from Alabama