MANSFIELD, PA—Mansfield University students in Associate Professor Shawndra Holderby’s Introduction to Women’s Studies class got a first-hand look at the history of the women’s suffrage movement in America by traveling to the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, NY on October 19.
Seneca Falls was where the first Women’s Rights Convention was held at the Wesleyan Chapel on Falls Street in 1848. Students explored the exhibits in the visitor’s center, which trace the fight for Women’s suffrage in America, and visited the reconstructed Wesleyan Chapel. While there students were invited to read parts of the Declaration of Sentiments in the spot where Elizabeth Cady Stanton delivered the speech during the convention. 
Holderby, who is the also the director of Women’s Studies at Mansfield University believes that it is important for students to visit historical spaces whenever possible.
“We are lucky to be so close to Seneca Falls,” she said. “It played such an important role in the long process of women’s suffrage. I am glad that my students got to experience it.”
“We all got to experience such an amazing exhibit and 
town together as a class,” Elementary Educator major Veronica Philip said. “We got to share our opinions and ideas. This was a wonderful trip that really made me question myself and my feelings.”
Students prepared for the visit by studying the women’s suffrage movement in Holderby’s Women’s Studies class. They also read Grace Monfredo’s Seneca Falls Inheritance, a fictional account of the Women’s Rights Convention of 1848.
Due to the popularity of the trip, Holderby is planning on offering an extended version of this trip again next fall in her American Women’s History class.
To learn more about studying History at Mansfield, go to mansfield.edu/history