This Learning Lab collection can be used as an assessment conclusion to the study of the portraits in Expanding Roles of Women or used alongside an existing unit of study on women’s suffrage or related topics. In this assessment, Women’s Rights Convention, has students imagine that specific portrait subjects are gathering to negotiate their demands for change.

Students will imagine what a diverse women’s rights convention may have been like if women of different backgrounds had originally attended the conventions that were initiated by women’s rights leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Students will be divided into groups to take on the roles of various women. Since the women students will represent did not convene in real life, students will imagine what these women could have achieved together. First, they will conduct research on the person they are assigned to represent. Next, student groups will prepare for the convention by creating portrait posters and writing speeches. Finally, at the mock women’s rights convention, they will present their speeches and engage in dialogue with other participants represented by student groups. The goal is to negotiate and determine a list of demands from the perspective of a diverse group of suffragists, professionals, and radicals.

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