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 …

The Pedagogy Of The Youth Teachers Of The Cuban Literacy Campaign, Yuleisy Mena

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract

The Cuban Literacy Campaign of 1961 turned teenagers into teachers. This study interviewed three former youth teachers and recorded their experiences through the oral history lens and method. The study focused on the pedagogical components of their lived experience, often overlooked by scholars who have mainly focused on the campaign’s political and economic history from the top down. In turn, issues of identity surfaced that helped explain the personal motivations for participating in the campaign and produced counter-narratives in the process. The interviews compiled allowed a bottom-up history to be archived, highlighting the stories of people omitted from the …