Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Our Representative On This Island: Local Belonging And Transnational Citizenship Among Syrian And Lebanese Cubans, 1880-1980, John T. Ermer Jr

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Émigrés from Ottoman Syria and Cuba who, beginning in the late-nineteenth century, traveled not unidirectionally, from one nation to another, but between and within multiethnic, polycentric empires. Tracing their history opens a route to better understanding global legal regimes of citizenship. Weaving government records from Cuba, France, and the United States with associational records and oral history interviews, this dissertation reveals how vernacular understandings of citizenship in Cuba and the Levant, based on locally derived conceptions of belonging, but over time contended with liberalizing legal reforms meant to redefine citizenship as a state-focused and legible status. As a mobile population …

Canadian Banks And Imperialism In The English-Speaking Caribbean, Tamanisha J. John

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Canadian banks have been important components of an imperialist system since at least the 19^th century. However, their long and rich history of operating as purely exploitative entities in the English-speaking Caribbean region is often overlooked— leading to many incomplete and conflicting narratives about Canada’s role within the global system. I argue that Canada is an imperial actor that exerts agency in supporting a Canadian banking oligopoly both within Canada and in the English-speaking Caribbean. Insufficient attention is given to these Canadian banks, especially considering the power they have wielded in the Caribbean over the centuries. By analyzing the …

Miedo, Celebración Y Otredad Racial En El Cambio De Siglo: Hacia La Construcción Del Negro En El Discurso Artístico-Literario Cubano (1880-1933), Alberto Sosa Cabanas

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The disrupting visual and literary languages of the turn of the 19^th century to the 1930’s constitute an area of research as a moment of crystallization of the Cuban national consciousness or identity. Writers and artists in Hispanic Caribbean region had to face the challenge of finding ways to include highly racialized elements (such as religion and popular culture) within the rhetorical space of the elites, in other words, what Angel Rama has labeled the "Republic of letters". The result of these efforts not only opened a new kind of negotiation of the idea of nation, but also meant …

Re-Imagining The Victorian Classics: Postcolonial Feminist Rewritings Of Emily Brontë, Yannel Celestrin

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

RE-IMAGINING THE VICTORIAN CLASSICS: POSTCOLONIAL FEMINIST REWRITINGS OF EMILY BRONTË

by

Yannel M. Celestrin

Florida International University, 2018

Miami, Florida

Professor Martha Schoolman, Major Professor

Through a post-structural lens, I will focus on the Caribbean, specifically Cuba, Guadeloupe, Marie-Galante, and Roseau, and how the history of colonialism impacted these islands. As the primary text of my thesis begins during the Cuban War of Independence of the 1890s, I will use this timeframe as the starting point of my analysis. In my thesis, I will compare Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heightsand Maryse Condé’s Windward Heights. Specifically, I …

Haiti And The Heavens: Utopianism And Technocracy In The Cold War Era, Adam M. Silvia

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined technocracy in Haiti in the Cold War era. It showed how Haitian and non-Haitian technicians navigated United States imperialism, Soviet ideology, and postcolonial nationalism to implement bold utopian visions in a country oppressed by poverty and dynastic authoritarianism. Throughout the mid-to-late twentieth century, technicians lavished Haiti with plans to improve the countryside, the city, the workplace, and the home. This study analyzed those plans and investigated the motivations behind them. Based on new evidence discovered in the private correspondence between Haitian, American, and Western European specialists, it questioned the assumption that technocracy was captivated by high-modernist ideology …

Pirates, Exiles, And Empire: English Seamen, Atlantic Expansion, And Jamaican Settlement, 1558-1658, Amanda J. Snyder

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A life of piracy offered marginal men a profession with a degree of autonomy, despite the brand of “outlaw” and the fear of prosecution. At various times throughout history, governments and crowned heads suspended much of their piracy prosecution, licensing men to work as “privateers” for the state, supplementing naval forces. This practice has a long history, but in sixteenth-century England, Elizabeth I (1558-1603) significantly altered this tradition. Recognizing her own weakness in effectively prosecuting these men and the profit they could contribute to the government, Elizabeth began incorporating pirates into the English naval corps in peacetime—not just in war. …