My study addresses how and why responses to the act of self-immolation often involve desensitized reactions, such as the use of puns. Self-immolation was once more respected and influential than it is today. The best example of this is Thich Quang Duc’s 1963 self-immolation protest that may have profoundly affected the Vietnam War. To understand the transition from Duc’s self-immolation to our current times, I contextualize the rhetoric involved in self-immolation throughout history, culture, religion, and media. Integral to self-immolation is its body rhetoric that prompts rhetorical discourse. This discourse involves performative rhetoric, the disputed cause of the self-immolator, the mediation of the self-immolation, and the audience response. I consider current online user responses from various online spaces that report and/or react to recent self-immolations in America. My findings indicate that self-immolation is still able to challenge American ideologies, profoundly influence audiences, and prompt critical rhetorical discourse / The rhetoric of self-immolation -- Theorizing self-immolation rhetoric -- The self-immolation situation in India and Buddhism -- The self-immolation situation in America -- The self-immolation of Daniel Shaull and Cecelia Casals. / Department of English

Translation of author's diss., Quaestio medico-chirurgica ... An mortis incertae signa; original Latin text p. [11]-40. / Also available online.

Buried in Polyester is a collection of essays in three parts loosely connected around the theme of the loss of my mother. Much like JoAnn Beard's The Boys of My My Youth, the essays hold up pieces of my life for inspection and puts them down again, not always with a sense of resolution. The subtext of the piece revolves around the search to put together the pieces of what my life was before and after my mother, and the transition from girlhood to adulthood with the absence of my mother. I hope also to explore how the self splits after a traumatic death, and the desperate attempt at recreation that takes the place of genuine mourning. The final three pieces are a trilogy exploring my father's deteriorating health and my attempts to connect with him while somehow recapturing the self that I lost. / Department of English

1999 Dozier Award Winner / This paper examines critically several key assumptions that have guided many archaeological interpretations of prehistoric mortuary assemblages. It is argued that more sophisticated models of mortuary deposition need to be incorporated into research that attempts to reconstruct community structure and other sociological variables from variation in grave assemblages. To illustrate this point, and to begin to build such models, a study of artifacts deposited in mortuary contexts was conducted by the author in a major urban center in Arizona in 1996. Several different behavioral pathways through which objects enter mortuary contexts are identified in this study, and some general material correlates for each are specified. This study also provides a vehicle for exploring preliminarily how, and to what extent, various forms of mortuary depostion are related to the social identities of the deceased. Finally, a synthetic model is developed which seeks to explain variation in mortuary deposition in terms of behavioral interactions between the living, on the one hand, and the deceased and various classes of material culture, on the other. It is hoped that the general models and material correlates developed through this study can be elaborated by prehistorians to bolster inferences drawn from specific mortuary populations and to explore previously-uncharted realms of mortuary behavior in the past.

This work of creative nonfiction is a hybrid of memoir, essay, cultural critique, and, to a lesser extent, literary journalism. The central autobiographical thread is my brother's shocking and violent murder at the hands of law enforcement, its handling by the media and subsequent trip through the American criminal justice system, and the spiraling effect of such trauma on family and friends. However, the text goes beyond a personal account of loss to illuminate the intersection between the personal and the universal: the way that the individual political subject embodies our cultural and systemic atmosphere of grief, alienation, confusion, powerlessness, violence, and corruption. This examination also necessarily raises questions about the social and personal consequences of individual and systemic decisions, as well as the role of rhetoric in attempts to justify such decisions and discourage activism. / Department of English

The purpose of this study was to examine the controversial personage of Dr. Josef Mengele, who was the chief physician of the Third Reich's Polish extermination camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Until very nearly the completion of this project, virtually no scholarly research had been conducted pertaining to Mengele's life, and therefore, the value of this inquiry is easily discernable. After forty years of eluding Israeli assassins and Nazi hunters, principally in several South American countries, Mengele's alleged remains were discovered, and subsequently exhumed for forensic analysis, near Sao Paulo, Brazil, in early June 1985. In the aftermath of intensive forensic examination, performed by an international team of experts, which included American, West German, and Brazilian scientists, the skeletal remains were pronounced to be those of Mengele within a reasonable scientific certainty. Skeptics not only had misgivings about the initial reports of Mengele's death, but also questioned the veracity of the preliminary medical report, pointing to both errors of omission and commission contained in the report's findings. Despite additional dental evidence discovered nearly one year after the disinterment of the Brazilian remains, which incidentally provided positive identification of the remains as those of Mengele, skeptics continued to discount the expert's opinions and resumed the search for Mengele with renewed vigor. It was concluded that the Brazilian remains were indeed those of Mengele. While the uncertainty over Mengele's apparent death has been resolved, it is recommended that further research be conducted into Mengele's pre-war life, as well as his clandestine post-war existence.

The aulos was the most important wind instrument in the ancient Greek world. In this thesis, the eight pre-Hellenistic graves in which auloi have been found are investigated with the aim of understanding auloi as grave goods. To achieve this aim, the eight burial assemblages are analysed and compared to each other, but also to the burial assemblages of other graves with musical instruments. In the ensuing discussion, the move from empirical analysis to explanatory reasoning is made, and it is concluded that the auloi found in graves reflect the musical activities of the deceased. Given the composition of the burial assemblages, it is suggested that these activities should be considered as a part of the well-educated background of the deceased, rather than as an indication of professional musicianship. / Musikinstrumentet aulos var det viktigaste blåsinstrumentet i den antika grekiska världen. I den här uppsatsen undersöks de åtta förhellenistiska gravar där auloi har påträffats. Syftet med undersökningen är att förstå auloi i egenskap av gravgåvor. För att uppnå detta syfte analyseras och jämförs de åtta gravarnas sammansättningar av gravgåvor med varandra, men även med sammansättningar från andra samtida gravar med musikinstrument. I den diskussion som följer övergår uppsatsen från empirisk analys till ett förklarande resonemang, vilket leder fram till slutsatsen att de auloi som påträffats i gravar återspeglar de avlidnas musikaliska verksamhet. Med tanke på gravarnas sammansättning föreslås det att denna verksamhet bör betraktas som en del av de avlidnas välutbildade bakgrund, snarare än som en indikation på yrkesverksamhet inom musik.

Historic-archaeological research on the Alamanni, an early medieval population in the periphery of the Frankish Empire, primarily focuses on themes such as their military character or issues of ethnicity, while the actual functioning of Alamannic societies remains conjectural. Aiming at presenting an integrated approach to the concepts of social organisation and social identities in Alamannic populations, this study examines and defines Alamannic identity and society by creating a dialogue between the disciplines of archaeology, biological anthropology and socio-cultural sciences. A bioarchaeology of identity explores the Alamanni of Pleidelsheim and Neresheim via their funerary and skeletal evidence, allowing for the factor of different environments that influence the interactions of a community. A key theme is the investigation of indicators for biological and social "status" by direct association of bioanthropological with funerary archaeological data, as well as by evaluation of present interpretations made from material culture in the light of bioanthropological analysis as a paramount focus. The results are interpreted in terms of social status and the perception of certain social parameters, exploring interrelations between factors such as sex and gender, age, status and activity for the entirety of a society. This research offers new perspectives on Alamannic societies and helps to comprehend Alamannic social organisation as a multi-layered phenomenon, emphasizing the importance of a biocultural approach. Beyond common perceptions, this study forms the basis for a new understanding of the Alamanni, as the results reveal a society that was complex and diverse, displaying its own characteristics in the Merovingian world. / AHRC. British Archaeological Association

Historic-archaeological research on the Alamanni, an early medieval population in the periphery of the Frankish Empire, primarily focuses on themes such as their military character or issues of ethnicity, while the actual functioning of Alamannic societies remains conjectural. Aiming at presenting an integrated approach to the concepts of social organisation and social identities in Alamannic populations, this study examines and defines Alamannic identity and society by creating a dialogue between the disciplines of archaeology, biological anthropology and socio-cultural sciences. A bioarchaeology of identity explores the Alamanni of Pleidelsheim and Neresheim via their funerary and skeletal evidence, allowing for the factor of different environments that influence the interactions of a community. A key theme is the investigation of indicators for biological and social 'status', by direct association of bioanthropological with funerary archaeological data, as well as by evaluation of present interpretations made from material culture in the light of bioanthropological analysis as a paramount focus. The results are interpreted in terms of social status and the perception of certain social parameters, exploring interrelations between factors such as sex and gender, age, status and activity for the entirety of a society. This research offers new perspectives on Alamannic societies and helps to comprehend Alamannic social organisation as a multi-layered phenomenon, emphasizing the importance of a biocultural approach. Beyond common perceptions, this study forms the basis for a new understanding of the Alamanni, as the results reveal a society that was complex and diverse, displaying its own characteristics in the Merovingian world.

Anenský dvůr used to be a farm surrounded by fields just a few dozen meters from the Austrian border. It worked even during the fifties before the creation of the Iron Curtain. Agricultural activity slowly subsided, people disappeared. Nature began quietly but ceaselessly, in small portions, getting on its side after the interval division. Buildings and their surroundings started to change. Nature has changed in fifty years place unrecognizable. Clearly defined boundaries are erased, flash greenery spread to the surrounding area and has created a specific single entity defining the surrounding chaos. Such a situation is the basis for the layout of the new cemetery. Current enhanced peripheral borders are strengthened by planting oaks, while the interior is modified. Most of invasive acacia and other shrubs are removed. The original character of the place, floodplain meadow is reinforced by planting new trees, such as birch or cherry.  The new cemetery consists of two main areas - internal groomed lawn under clearly defined square walls, which leads to deposition of ash and vice versa in the outer belt informal grown meadows are individual pavilions cemetery.