If you want peruse a discourse on religion and feminism some great authors regarding Christian feminist theology and post-Christian feminist theology are Pamela Dickey Young http://rels.queensu.ca/fac.pdy.php and Mary Daly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Daly.

Pamela was a prof of mine and she is the reason why I am a feminist and moreover why religious studies can be an amazing lens to deconstruct the world.

Mary Daly is... radical... and because I identify as male she would expect nothing less of me then to somewhat marginalize her views. Regardless her writings are amazing at pointing out inequity in the church. but she is definitively POST Christian.

Another tip, if you are calling out for feminists try to be gender inclusive. You'll find many male allies if you explicitly include all genders in your language.

Hope this helps!

Note: This gets long. And kind of nerdy. Oops.

I am currently a grad student at a Catholic university (also my undergrad alma mater), and our feminist organization has had some...bumpy periods. I'm actually not a member, because they take an explicitly pro-birth stance on abortion, but my peer educators' group co-sponsors a *lot* of events with them.

One of our great successes is the end-of-semester Law & Order party. Operating on the axiom that the closer it gets to finals, the more Law & Order and CSI episodes students watch, we show one or two episodes of Law & Order SVU every night for a week and have a discussion afterwards. Yes, we talk about the issues specifically provoked by the episodes, but also about the portrayal of male vs female (and white vs black, and LGBT vs het/cis, etc) lawyers, defendants and victims.

Also consider getting plugged into national events, such as Take Back the Night or a performance of the Vagina Monologues. TVM, in fact, is probably the way in which our feminist group is the *most* visible, due to the heavy protesting by (especially but not only) the Knights of Columbus, who are VERY vocal. And TVM apparently serves as a great recruiting tool. Plus, it's fun, which is reason enough.

As I noted above, our feminist group is officially pro-birth. Still, there is a widespread misconception on campus that feminist=pro-choice and feminists care ONLY about abortion, therefore as "good" Catholics they can't be feminists. So every year, our group brings in a "pro-life feminist" public speaker. I have huuuge problems with the Church's ban on contraceptives and its vehement pro-birth stance, and it is true that the speaker does usually at least touch on those topics. But the speech is often a huge success in getting people to realize that yes, they CAN consider themselves feminists without the stigma of "bad Catholic."

In terms of drawing people to events, it really, really helps if you can get a few professors to require their students to attend, or to offer extra credit. We (peer educators + social justice groups) typically have good luck with profs in criminal justice, women's studies, communications (this would fit well with your interest in the media), political science and theology. I don't know what specific college you go to, but I know that there is a Catholic college in Boston whose theology Ph.D program includes a track emphasizing liberation theology and has a *lot* of profs who focus on it. So that might be something to check out. Our theology department's social justice group presents a panel discussion on a different theology of liberation (Latin Am, womanist, etc) every year, and attendance is mandatory for students in the required Theo 101 classes.

And I'm with Jeff on the idea of having a reading group/panel discussion about feminist theology. Of course, I'm slightly biased here because reading and talking about theology is What I Do. If you reeeally want to provoke discussion, Mary Daly's "The Church and the Second Sex" or "Beyond God the Father" would be good places to start. Or, for a riot-inciting discussion on the Bible, try "The Feminist Companion to the Latter Day Prophets." Possible poster slogan: "The Bible is pornography!"

...And I think I'll stop before I go COMPLETELY theology-dork on you.

I was in your shoes about 9 years ago. Cripes, I'm old. Anyway ...

YES on The Vagina Monologues, especially if you're at a Jesuit school (Jesuit schools seem to have a proud history of standing up for TVM in the face on conservative foes). Partner with your women's studies program. One of the areas where we always had a positive community response was working on issues of violence against women, especially in engaging males as allies and advocates (raising funds and doing drives for local programs and shelters). We were also able to bring in some more "controversial" (read: pro-choice) speakers by working closely with our student activities office and being really creative about framing. For instance, when Jane Roberts of the 34 Million Friends Campaign came, we framed it as a lecture about maternal/child health and women's equality globally. When the director of the local affiliate of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice spoke, we framed it as a discussion of the ways religious beliefs affect women's childbearing choices. While we were never able to organizationally take a pro-choice stance, we were still able to bring a lot of dialogue to campus. Good luck in this important work!

Hey I'd just like to say that I'm kind of in the same boat, I'm going to be the first self proclaimed feminist to attend the University I am going to, its not a catholic school but a science institute where there is a 6 to 1 guy to girl ratio and I'm kind of struggling through some of it too. I hope everything goes well for you and good luck

I wrote a post a bit similar to this when I first signed up for Feministing. I'm looking to make something like a Women's Alliance. I am having trouble deciding about the topics to discuss, since I go to a Catholic uni as well. It seems like I would have to avoid the topic of abortion all together (even though I support pro-choice). It's very complicated, but I think we make something similar and come up with new ideas, it might work out.

If you want to contact me, I think some of my info should be on my profile if I remember correctly, if not just reply to me on this thread and I can contact you if you like.

I just graduated from a Catholic university that did have a feminist group on campus. I never joined it for various reasons, but I just want to see good on you for doing this, it's VERY needed.

A few other commenters recommended the Vagina Monologues. I think the play is absolutely wonderful and we always had it sponsored by organizations like the English department etc and gave proceeds to rape crisis centers in the area. That is, until there was an extremely public battle over the place of something like the Vagina Monologues on a Catholic campus. It got dirty, and the Monologues got kicked off campus and eventually the groups stopped putting them on altogether because it became focused on freedom of speech instead of feminism. We now have something called Loyal Daughters and Sons, which students (both male and female) write sketches and are performed in the spirit of VM, but of course with a more "Catholic" bent. It's a compromise, but it's really interesting to hear different experiences of gender and relationships that happen on your own campus. It was really powerful hearing a descriptive account of a rape when you know that it could have happened to the girl down the hall from you.

Other things that happened on our campus were a conference of sorts that focused on body image, brought in speakers and showed movies that sort of thing. It was always very well received. We had a Gay/Lesbian Filmmakers film festival, but that went the way of Catholic administration also. I highly recommend doing student/faculty/speaker panels. I think it's really good to hear comments from your own community, so you can better relate to theoretical constructs. We had showings of movies/TV shows followed by discussions after. We also had a festival outside that brought in organizations from the community (like rape crisis centers, domestic abuse hotlines, that sort of thing) and let the students talk with them. I agree with trying to get professors to offer extra credit for attending events. Since you're in the women's studies program this shouldn't be hard--especially for intro classes. It also might be helpful to put on events jointly with other organizations, such as a GLBTQ group, progressive student group, or basically anything you would think would be open to it. Asking definitely can't hurt, and you can double you hears about the event that way!

You're doing a really great thing, since I know firsthand how difficult it is to be feminist on a conservative campus. If you don't want to talk about religion at every event you definitely don't have to, but there will be great opportunities for others to discuss the intersection of their faith & feminism, and what's problematic about that, etc. Good luck to you!

Greetings all! And a big thanks to Johanna for your mention of RCRC and our support for folks at religiously affiliated schools. Check out our youth website at www.syrf.org to learn more about our resources etc.