Ángel R. (Class of 2023)
A fourth-year student in the College, Angel is majoring in History and Political Science. He is interested in post-colonial studies, specifically the different avenues through which colonized and oppressed peoples have imagined liberation. This past summer, Ángel joined the SISRM 2022 cohort and enrolled in Archival Methods and Historical Thinking course. In this class, Ángel encountered some readings that he had already done in the past, but this time, he was able to see them in a different light, finding new things that he had not before. At the same time, this class helped him plan strategically for this thesis, by helping him identify what archives he would like to use, as well as what he would like to count as historical evidence.
Ángel also worked as a research assistant with Diana Schwartz Francisco in two projects. The first one involved exploring indigenous relations with the Mexican government in the 1940s-50s and focused on specific anthropologists from both UChicago and Mexico. Over the summer, he went through their correspondence and tried to find links between their thinking and what they might reveal about anthropology in Mexico at that time. Ángel’s second project focused on the impact of dam construction on indigenous communities in the state of Michoacán and how, if at all, the Mexican government thought about the impact of their projects. Combining the projects’ aims and the methodology course he was taking, Ángel was able to use the special collections to go through the records to learn more about those topics, and to put into practice his archival research skills.
(Student Spotlight from Summer 2022)