The Miami Freedom Tower was built during the 1920s and then used during the 1960s as a processing center for newly arriving Cuban refugees. This report will demonstrate the ways in which a particular, powerful segment of the Cuban American community used the tower as a means to establish for themselves a more positive, Euroamerican identity in the wake of the Mariel boatlift and in the context of national debates over immigration in the 1980s and 1990s. By first looking at the U.S. government’s establishment of Cuban American identity during the early Cold War as positive and ideologically aligned with the United States and then examining the ways in which that identity was challenged in the 1980s and 1990s, this report demonstrates that national and ethnic identities are constantly in flux. Further, it is necessary to break down and fully analyze the ways in which the identities of immigrant groups are framed both externally by the press, popular culture, and the government and internally by their own goals, conceptions, and histories. / text

This dissertation traces how Cuban and Angolan novels published in the final decades of the twentieth century engage with the political and artistic projects promoted by and through the post-revolutionary socialist-aligned political systems. The dissertation sustains that there are a collection of textual practices that insert themselves into the official “orthodox” historiographic and literary debates by reconsidering not just historical moments in the past that are central to these debates, but also reference how these moments are written and read from an official point of view. By employing tactics of ironic citation, parody and anachronism, these works not only comment upon official readings of history and demands of post-revolutionary literature, but they also reveal “silences,” to use Rolph-Trouillot’s term, in the literary corpus and in the experiences of Angolan and Cuban people that these alternative corpuses represent. Through revision of official discourses, they present an alternative reading of present subjects’ interactions with the past. These practices, which together I have termed “poetics of disappointment,” allow an intervention into the discussions surrounding both the production and the criticism of contemporary Cuban and Angolan literatures from a variety of political perspectives. The dissertation analyzes Cubans Alejo Carpentier’s La consagración de la primavera, Reinaldo Arenas’ La loma del ángel and Eliseo Alberto’s Caracol Beach as well as Angolans Manuel Rui’s Memória de mar, J. E. Agualusa’s Nação crioula and Boaventura Cardoso’s Mãe, materno mar. On one hand, these works recall the monumental events that the Cuban Revolution and Angolan independence represented, evoking a collective optimism and sense of community forged among pueblos/ povos in the processes of decolonization and promoting movements for social justice. On the other hand, the novels analyzed point out the limits of programmatic interpretations of post-revolutionary history. Demonstrating positions of discomfort with the notions of messianic immanence, idealized racial synthesis and the aftermaths of violence and displacement that official sources rarely document, these novels both privilege and question literary creation as a way of negotiating this disappointment. / text

This report explores Club Cubano Inter-Americano’s history in order to show how it helped situate Cuban immigrants within the Anglo and Latino communities in New York City in the early 20th century, and it examines the ways in which immigrants balanced their island heritage with community building in the United States. The different parts of the report focus on the organization’s foundation, leadership, activities, events, and treatment of race. A historiography of similar social groups provides a necessary background of the overall structure and goals of Cuban mutual-aid societies. Although the question of race was never officially present in Club-related rhetoric, a number of similarities link its makeup and functions to an existing tradition of Afro-Cuban mutual-aid societies on the island and abroad. The analysis of the New York Club Cubano Inter-Americano provides a glimpse into a part of the Cuban migration in the United States that simply does not fit with the rest. / text

This study examined whether the widely reported positive relation between "authoritative" parenting and adolescent adjustment among middle class white American families was also present among Cuban Americans, and whether this relationship was moderated by various degrees of parents' acculturation, including biculturalism. A sample of 112 adolescents of Cuban origin who attended high schools in South Florida was included in the study, along with their mothers and fathers, for a total of 336 participants. Three different standardized measures were employed—the Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ), the Bicultural Involvement Questionnaire (BIQ), and the Child Behavior Checklist/6-18 (CBCL/6-18)—as well as a Demographic Information Sheet (DIS). Scores from the PAQ and the BIQ were examined first to determine any relationship between parenting styles and parents' level of acculturation/biculturalism. Parenting styles and level of acculturation/biculturalism scores were later analyzed to predict adolescents' developmental outcomes as measured by the Total Competence and Total Problem scales of the CBCL/6-18. Multiple Regression Analyses revealed that no significant relationship was present between parenting styles and parents' level of acculturation/biculturalism, and that these two variables in turn did not significantly predict adolescents' developmental outcomes. Given that participants resided in an area with unique cultural characteristics as compared to the rest of the United States, the possibility of the acculturation/biculturalism variable masking the true effects of parenting styles was considered. Therefore, additional analyses were conducted without including the acculturation/biculturalism variable. In this case, results indicated that the positive correlates of authoritative parenting transcend the middle class white American culture and can be found in the population of Cuban Americans studied. According to these findings, as adolescents perceived their parents to be more authoritative, parents rated their adolescents as demonstrating higher levels of competence and lower levels of behavioral and emotional problems. In addition, as adolescents perceived their parents to be more authoritarian, parents found more behavioral and emotional problems in their children. Limitations in the study, and implications for future research and practice were also discussed. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

Thesis (B.A.) Summa Cum Laude--Butler University, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [62]-[63]).

Thesis (LL. M.)--Judge Advocate General's School, U.S. Army, 1963. / "April 1963." Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 65-67). Also issued in microfiche.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2006. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on April 17, 2009) Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2004. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 221-243). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:32:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2011-07-29Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:07:13Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 maciel_mas_dr_assis.pdf: 1650766 bytes, checksum: e8765694e0af76232dc640bba73ef18f (MD5) / Dentro da área de concentração “Literatura e Vida Social”, sob o prisma da linha de pesquisa “Poéticas do texto literário: cultura e representação (PTL)”, pretende este trabalho, antes, tomando-se como base o romance póstumo El color del verano (1991), do escritor cubano exilado Reinaldo Arenas (1943-1990), analisar a(s) construção(ões) identitária(s) homoerótica(s) masculina(s). Partimos, para tanto, nesse percurso, de teóricos como Jacob Stockinger (1978) e David William Foster (2000), dentre outros, cujos textos apontam na direção de uma ars poetica homotextual consciente, sobretudo, a partir da segunda metade do século XX, diferente do pensamento de muitos para os quais se trata tão somente de um leitmotiv e esteja mais para o conteúdo e menos para a forma. A pesquisa, por fim, não deixa de vislumbrar, outrossim, os mecanismos narrativos que estruturam a referida obra do autor holguineiro, dentre eles, destacamos a intertextualidade, isto é, o diálogo com outros textos e autores alheios, a intratextualidade, ou seja, o diálogo constante consigo mesmo e com seus próprios textos bem como, também, por derradeiro, a extratextualidade, isto é, o diálogo constante e as referências, dentro do texto, à cultura e história cubanas e latinoamericanas / In the area of concentration “Literature and Social Life”, under the aspect of the line of search “Poetics of the literary text: culture and representation (PLT)”, intends this work, before, having as a base the posthumous novel El color del verano (1991), by the exilian cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas (1943-1990), to analyze the male homoerotic identity construction. We started, therefore, in this trajectory, of theorists as Jacob Stockinger (1978) and David William Foster (2000), among others, which texts point to the direction of a conscious homotextual ars poetica, specially, from the second half of the twentieth century, against of the thoughts of many people who things this is just a leitmovit and is more to the content than to the form. So, this search discerns indistinctly, besides, the narrative mechanisms which structure this narrated work of the holguinerian author, among them, we detach the intertextuality, that is, the dialogue with other foreign texts and authors, the intratextuality, that is, the constant dialogue with themselves and with their own texts, as well as conclusive, the extratextuality, that is, the constant dialogue and the references, inside the text, to the culture and Cuban and Latin-American history.

The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding and gather insight into the experiences of Cuban American women attending a 4-year, public, Hispanic Serving Institution and how those experiences influenced their identity development. This was accomplished by conducting in-depth interviews and focus groups with 12 self-identified Cuban American women who were classified as sophomores, juniors, seniors, or graduate students. All of the participants had attended Florida International University for at least 1 year. The women had varying degrees of on and off campus academic and campus involvement activities. Participants were asked about six topics: (a) family, (b) cultural influences, (c) gender, (d) ethical and moral development, (e) education, and (f) ethnic identity. Based on the coding of the data provided by the participants, several interconnected themes emerged including the importance of family, familial support, cultural pride, expected gender roles, core values, decision making, biculturalism, and the value of attending a Hispanic Serving Institution. These themes were found to be all related to the identity development of the participants. It was found that looking at identity through a multidimensional lens is essential. Looking at personal growth and development through anthropological, sociological, and psychosocial lenses gave greater insight to a population of students who have been largely underrepresented in the literature. The findings of this case study are that culture is contextual and identity development is complex for first and second generation Cuban American women attending a Hispanic Serving Institution in a majority minority city. It was found that several factors, including the importance of family and gender roles, were not found to be more important than one another; rather they supported each other in regards to the participants’ identity development. The notion of biculturalism as it has been presented in the literature was challenged in this study as it was found that the participants’ experiences living and attending a school in a majority minority city presented a new way of understanding what it might mean to be bicultural. For professionals in the field, the findings of this study may lead to a broader understanding of nuances within the Hispanic community and a better understanding of the distinctiveness of what it means to be a Cuban American woman.