Check-in with Student Historians: Ana Shriver

December 2024

This semester has been full of learning, pre-research, and navigating challenges. I have had the chance to learn from UW Archive staff, staff of the former UW Law Immigrant Justice Clinic, and the Center for Campus History. I searched the archives, hoping to find an issue on Latinx and Hispanic students on campus to further explore for my project. I found articles from the 2016 “Day Without Latinos” protests and articles on topics such as immigration and DACA. Although I could not find more information on the topics in the UW archives, the archives prompted me to wonder about DREAMers’ experience on campus. Thus began my journey in the oral history aspect of archival work, an attempt to uplift the voices of DREAMers on campus. This required a lot of pre-work on my end to learn more about DACA and immigration in the US and Wisconsin, but I thoroughly enjoyed the research. I have run into challenges finding current and former students and/or faculty who were DACA recipients and DREAMers, as I understand it is not a status many make known, and it can be a sensitive subject. In the coming weeks, I hope to find more people who would like to participate and to begin interviewing those I’ve had pre-interviews with.