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Between the Old and the New Homeland - Integration and Self-Identification of the Czech Community in the USA throughout the Second Half of the XIXth century
Marholeva, Krasimira ; Moravcová, Mirjam (advisor) ; Penčev, Vladimir (referee) ; Jakoubková Budilová, Lenka (referee)
Between the Old and the New Homeland: Integration and Self-Identification of the Czech Community in the USA throughout the Second Half of the XIXth century Mgr. Krasimira Marholeva, Ph.D. Abstract The dissertation assessed the interdependence between the process of integration and shifting national identity of Czech immigrants in the USA throughout the second half of the XIXth century. In the first place, I explored the strategy they elaborated in order to integrate to the American society. Secondly, I assessed how the Czech immigrants identified themselves and how they endeavoured to preserve their national and cultural identity, to prevent their children from acculturation and assimilation. Last but not least, I explored the process of integration and self-identification of the children of the Czech freethinkers during the period in question through the prism of their letters that had been published in the Czech-American freethinking periodical press. In my work, I relied on archival sources, on Czech-American periodical press, on auto-biographies of Czech immigrants in the USA, on memoirs of Czech-American contemporaries and Czech travellers, and last but not least, on letters of the children of the Czech freethinkers in the USA.
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