Thesis--University of Florida. / Description based on print version record. Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-122).

Cubans arrive in the U.S. with more formal education than other Latino immigrants, and they arrive to communities with long standing networks of support. Though their baccalaureate degree attainment is better than their non-Cuban Latina counterparts, Cuban women still lag behind White, non-Latina women. The qualitative study aims to explore the principal influences and non-academic factors that 15 adult Cuban non-native English-speaking women in South Florida attribute to the successful attainment of their baccalaureate degree. There are many differences among the various immigrant Latino communities in the U.S., and Cuban women are largely absent from the research. Nearly 75% of Cuban women who start Miami Dade College with English as a second language course-work drop out within one year of matriculation. Understanding the principal influences and non-academic factors related to the baccalaureate attainment rate of this group may assist educators and administrators in providing the support these women need to enhance their degree completion. The literature says that the baccalaureate degree attainment of Latinos is influenced by age-at-the-time-of-immigration, country of origin, and gender, yet little research was found on the degree attainment specifically of female Cubans who entered the U.S. having already completed most of their education in Cuba. My dissertation explores the journey of 15 Cuban women who arrived in the U.S. as teens during the 1990s and had to learn English as a second language at an urban community college prior to completing a baccalaureate degree. The purpose of the research is to describe the principal influences and non-academic factors that these women attribute to their baccalaureate degree attainment.

The study analyzes the largely understudied cinematic cooperation between Czechoslovakia and Cuba in the first decade following the Cuban Revolution. It is based mostly on archival documents from the former Central Directorship of Czechoslovak State Film, the ministry of education and culture and the ministry of foreign affairs. Several chapters also draw from oral history, data collected from series of interviews with Cuban technicians and artists who have worked in Cuban cinema since the 1960s as well as Czechoslovak experts who worked at the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Arts and Industries in the 1960s. The Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (CICAI), founded in March 1959 shortly after the triumph of the Revolution, faced a shortage of human and material resources since its inception. The film industry, which had been mostly in the hands of the Americans before 1959, lost much personnel due to mass emigration. Later on, due to the American blockade and embargo, it also lost its most important provider of films, material and equipment. The majority of CICAI's technician and artists were just starting and were lacking in technical knowledge required to make films. Czechoslovak State Film (CSF) offered extensive help to Cuban cinema, especially in the area of developing the...