amy richards and jennifer baumgardner-April 5, 2005

Public Lecture "Can I be Religious and...be a Feminist? Can I be a Feminist and...be Religious? Tuesday, April 5, 2005, 8:00 p.m. in Center for Faith and Life Recital Hall

Amy Richards and Jennifer Baumgardner have been working together on issues of interest to young women since they met as 22 year olds working for Ms. Magazine. In 2000 they published Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, widely recognized as an insightful and accessible history and evaluation of the women’s movement in the United States. The book served as a platform for their first speaking tour. Since 2000, Amy and Jennifer have lectured at more than 160 colleges and high schools including Yale, Harvard, Colgate, the University of North Dakota, the University of Michigan, Mills College, Rutgers, Tulane, Vanderbilt, USC, Swarthmore, and Appalachian State. In 2004 they were both fellows at Dartmouth. Their many speaking engagements inspired them to found Soapbox, Inc., a feminist speakers’ bureau that represents two dozen prominent writers and activists such as Katha Pollitt, Gloria Steinem, Irshad Manji, and Rebecca Walker.

Amy and Jennifer have dedicated themselves to educating young audiences and motivating students to find their own place in the world. They have written both together and individually and have been widely published in many journals, magazines, and edited volumes. They are also recognized as returning commentators on television and radio programs, including Fox’s The O’Reilly Factor, The Oprah Winfrey Show , NPR’s Talk of the Nation, New York One and several programs on CNN. For two years Amy was also a host on She Span, a weekly political roundtable on the Oxygen Network, and is currently a regular panelist on PBS’s Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered. Amy and Jennifer have just completed a new book on daily forms of activism, Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism.

Amy and Jennifer have both received accolades for their writing and for their activist work. Recently Amy was chosen by the American Association of University Women as a ‘Woman of Distinction.’ She was also publicly distinguished as a leader when she was profiled by Ms. Magazine in their story, "21 for the 21st: Leaders for the Next Century.” In 2003, the Commonwealth Club of California hailed Jennifer as one of six “Visionaries for the 21st Century.” Together, Amy and Jennifer will bring their experience as writers, media figures, and activist organizers to the Luther campus in a way that should energize the community and help give voice to women’s role in the church. For full biographies of both Amy and Jennifer, click on the link above to their speaker's bureau webpage.

	Left: Amy Richards graduated from Barnard College in 1992. She co-founded the Third Wave Foundation, a national organization for young feminist activists between the ages of 15 and 30. She now makes her living as a lecturer, writer and consultant.
Right: Jennifer Baumgardner lives in New York City and serves as a prominent voice for women and girls, working as a writer, a speaker, and an activist. Ms. Baumgardner is the editor of a series of feminist classics, including Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex (2003) and Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch (2002) for Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

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