Originally from Madison, Wisconsin, Annalisa Cravens is a 2010 graduate of Tulane University. A Dean’s Honor Scholar, she earned her B.A. in Latin American Studies and Spanish with minors in Brazilian Studies and Portuguese. She earned an M.A. in Latin American Studies, joint with a J.D. degree from Tulane, in May 2014. During her undergraduate career, Annalisa spent a summer abroad session in Mexico as well as splitting her Junior Year Abroad between Brazil and Argentina, and she received the Almir Bruneti Award for Excellence in Luso-Brazilian Studies in 2010. Annalisa's undergraduate honors thesis, directed by Professor James D. Huck, Jr., and the result of research in Arizona and Sonora, was entitled “The Environmental Condition on the U.S.-Mexico Border since NAFTA: Water Contamination in the Region of Ambos Nogales.” Her main interests were immigration and contemporary international relations, particularly those of Mexico and Brazil in relation to the United States.
A recipient of the Robert Rees Memorial Scholarship, Annalisa entered Tulane Law School in fall 2011 and graduated with her J.D. in May 2014. In law school, her publications in the Tulane Law Review have reflected her interest in Latin American Studies and immigration law. Her first, Orellana-Monson v. Holder: The Fifth Circuit Accepts the BIA’s Particularity and Social Visibility Requirements for Defining Membership of a Particular Social Group in Asylum Claims, concerned the Fifth Circuit’s adaptation of onerous requirements for certain asylum seekers and received the Gertler Law Review Award. Her second publication, “This Is Not the System Congress Created”: Rethinking Louisiana’s Immigration Law after Arizona v. United States, examined Louisiana’s criminalization of alien drivers, a statute now struck down by the Louisiana Supreme Court. Annalisa served as the Senior Articles Editor of the Tulane Law Review and completed a federal judicial clerkship with the Honorable Martin L.C. Feldman.
