This thesis attempts to analyze Japanese British writer Kazuo Ishiguro¡¦s The Remains of the Day by tracing Ishiguro¡¦s engagement with such problematic issues as the recuperation of history, the negotiation with Englishness, and the fetishization of professionalism. To critically study the thematic concerns of Ishiguro¡¦s novel¡Xits examination of the conflicts between memory and history, its critique of the discursive formation of Englishness, and its scrutiny of psychic costs of the subject formation of a professional butler, I adopt a critical stance that is hybridized in nature and read The Remains of the Day as an incisive deconstruction of the colonial cultural legacies that the English both embrace and disavow. The first chapter explores the ways in which the macronarratives of the nation¡¦s history impact and influence the micronarratives of personal memory. Stevens¡¦s yearning for the glorious past of colonial Britain and his disavowal of his shameful memory well reflect the collective symptom of post-imperial melancholia that the British people experienced in the ¡¦80s. The second chapter applies Homi Bhabha¡¦s ideas of ¡§stereotype¡¨ to study the discursive formation of Englishness through acts of cultural coercion and problematize the concepts of Englishness as discursively constructed fetishes. By paying concentrated attention on English imaginaries of the landscape of English country side, the English country house, and the English gentleman, Ishiguro mocks and questions, if not ridicule, the concepts of Englishness by making parodies of these three prototypes of Englishness. By using Michel Foucault¡¦s concepts of discipline, sexuality, and subjectivity, the third chapter studies Stevens¡¦s professionalism, his conflicts between personal affections and desire and his professional principles. Even though Ishiguro proffers a critique of Stevens¡¦s blind loyalty and exposes the political consequences of the butler¡¦s non-political stance, the novel ends with an open ending that leaves undecided how Stevens is to face the ¡§remains¡¨ of his days, or, as an analogy, how the English are to tackle with the ¡§remains¡¨ of their days.

Thesis (M.A.)--Texas State University-San Marcos, 2008. / Vita. Appendices: leaves 74-79. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-84). Also available on microfilm.

Diss.--dept. of anthropology--university of Arizona, 2000. / Bibliogr. p. 267-295.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Stockholms universitet, 2008. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

Thesis (B.S.)--University of Wisconsin -- La Crosse, 2009. / Also available online. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 37).

Thesis (M.A.)--Texas A & M University, 2003. / "Major Subject: Anthropology." Title from author supplied metadata. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2002. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 218-225). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

As bridges continue to age and budgets reduce, transportation officials often need quantitative data to distinguish between bridges that can be kept safely in service and those that need to be replaced or retrofitted. One of the critical types of structural deterioration for steel bridges is fatigue-induced fracture, and evaluating the daily fatigue damage through field measurements is one means of providing quantitative data to transportation officials. When analyzing data obtained through field measurements, methods are needed to properly evaluate fatigue damage. Five techniques for evaluating strain data were formalized in this dissertation. Simplified rainflow counting, which converts a stress history into a histogram of stress cycles, is an algorithm standardized by ASTM and the first step of a fatigue analysis. Two methods, effective stress range and index stress range, for determining the total amount of fatigue damage during a monitoring period are presented. The effective stress range is the traditional approach for determining the amount of damage, whereas the index stress range is a new method that was developed to facilitate comparisons of fatigue damage between sensors and/or bridges. Two additional techniques, contribution to damage and cumulative damage, for visualizing the data were conceived to allow an engineer to characterize the spectrum of stress ranges. Using those two techniques, an engineer can evaluate whether lower stress cycles (concern due to electromechanical noise from data acquisition system) and higher stress ranges (concern due to possible spike from data acquisition system) contribute significantly to the accumulation of damage in the bridge. Data from field measurements can be used to improve the estimate of the remaining fatigue life. Deterministic and probabilistic approaches for calculating the remaining fatigue life were considered, and three methods are presented in this dissertation. For deterministic approaches, the output of the equations is the year when the fatigue life has been exceeded for a specific probability of failure, whereas for probabilistic approaches, the probability of failure for a given year is calculated. Four different steel bridges were instrumented and analyzed according to the techniques outlined in this dissertation. / text

How do we mourn the dead and proceed with our lives when the dead do not absent themselves from our everyday world, but remain integrated into our community of friends on social networking sites? This paper explores the changes occurring in the ways in which we experience online the deaths of our loved ones, namely, a collapse between public and private modes of grief. The changes under examination include the changing perception of death, identity creation and ownership, the role of the bereaved, theoretical/therapeutic approaches to grieving, the function of ritual, and commemoration of the dead. Questions this paper addresses include: to whom do the dead belong? Does death become banal when it is incorporated into everyday life? How can a ritual reflect a passage from one state of being to another when you are part of a system that does not recognize a change in status? / text

Where do people die alone when they remain undiscovered for extended periods of time? Estimation of the postmortem interval (PMI) is critical to reconstructing the events surrounding a person's death and this is an area in which forensic anthropologists have played a leading role. This thesis applied an anthropological framework that takes a comprehensive approach to analyzing the demography of unaccompanied deaths, the relationships and timing of decomposition in multiple depositional contexts, and created a model for the prediction of accumulated degree days (ADD) for bodies within enclosures. While there have been extensive experimental and case study reviews on decomposition in outdoor environments, very little data exist for enclosed spaces. A retrospective analysis of 2003-2008 Nebraskan autopsy records demonstrates that most people dying alone are within their homes. Of the 87 forensic cases reviewed, 69 unaccompanied deaths occurred within enclosed environments. The value of retrospective studies in combination to experimental research is that the large number of variables that affect decompositional rates may be explored in a natural context. Multivariate models put emphasis on the dynamics of decompositional change and comprehensively address death and decomposition within an anthropological framework. For enclosed depositions, the PMI ranged from 1 - 66 days (n= 64, X¯=4.84, s.d.=9.1037) and the ADD ranged from 0 - 786 ADD (n=64, X¯=67.43, s.d.=120.275). Bass' (1997) model for outdoor surface decay was found to be an adequate predictor of the PMI for this sample (r=0.829, n=64, p These results provided support for the prediction of ADD as a measure of the rate of decomposition. Relationships among ADD and multiple intrinsic, extrinsic and epidemiological variables were identified and considered for a multiple linear regression model. Variables selected by the model included: decomposition odor, use of air conditioning/heat, marbling, brain liquefaction, and mummification. The model was found to account for 95.2% of the variation in ADD (Adjusted R² =0.952; F=40.807, df=5, 5 and p