<p> This creative research explores connections between the fields of scientific research, weapons proliferation and ceramic art making. My work consists of a twisted world of these themes seen and told through childhood imagery and subjects. The juxtaposition of violence and destruction against innocence and playfulness and the cyclical way that I engage both intuitively and through calculation with my artwork are vital in impressing a notion of conflict&rsquo;s early presence and danger in our lives. The overlap of weapons, chemistry and art is embodied in the relationships of the characters within these compositions and their iconographic meanings. This amalgamation is constructed through installations, sculptures and miniature models employing numerous kinds of ceramic and non-ceramic materials such as metal, wood, plastics and glass.</p><p> These works present conflict as similar to chemistry - omnipresent and unavoidable. The truths explored here feature a convoluted personal narrative, where family portraiture is seen through the lenses of our scientists and the imaginations of our children. Within the microcosmic worlds that the characters and environments in this work construct, the viewer is presented with simultaneous situations of destruction and unity. It is my intent through this imagery to lead my audience towards a greater appreciation of multiple views and non-binary biases.</p><p>

<p> This dissertation informed by qualitative intrinsic case study investigated instructor expert classroom behavior at the Department of Defense Joint Military Intelligence Training Center. Expert classroom behavior has been investigated in K-12 and higher education situations, but never in a Department of Defense adult training and education environment. This study adds to the body of work closing this critical literature gap. Learners in all environments form judgments of educator credibility based on demonstrated expert classroom behavior, which impacts learning. Learners who believe in the credibility of their educator are known to pay increased attention, apply extra effort, and achieve increased levels of learning. This study used a previously developed 75-item classroom expert behavior checklist with participant data analysis revealing three themes; Joint Military Intelligence Training Center instructors exhibit expert classroom behavior, the checklist requires modification for adult training and education environment application, and determined effort is required to ensure instructor awareness of expert behavior and the consequences to themselves, the learning institution, and learners when not demonstrated. It could be argued in no other environment is demonstration of expert classroom behavior more important than at the Joint Military Intelligence Training Center responsible for training Department of Defense Intelligence Analysts who conduct all source analysis and provide information informing national security-level decision-making. </p><p>

In this dissertation I investigate the relationship between arms races and the probability of militarized conflict onset. The research question is critically important on at least two fronts: first, many policy makers and scholars alike believe ramping up military forces is the best way to deter military conflict (the peace through strength argument) while others suggest arms races do nothing but lead states towards militarized conflict. Second, this dissertation fills a research gap present since the end of the Cold War since research on arms races by the scientific community of conflict scholars has slowed dramatically since the end of the Cold War and findings remain inconclusive. The Steps to War research program (Vasquez, 1993; Senese and Vasquez, 2008), however, suggests arms races are one of the central provocateurs of militarized conflict and warfare between states. Using this theoretical approach I frame arms races as dangerous events in the global arena and provide a clear theoretical account of the international system, the incentives for arming, and the linkage between arms racing and international conflict. The central theoretical argument suggests arms races lead states into conflict with one another. I test my expectations through a regional analysis of minor powers from three geographic areas: Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East over the period 1970-2000. In an important departure from the majority of previous quantitative arms race and conflict studies I utilize the actual weapons stockpiles of states (as opposed to defense expenditure data) as the primary measure of an arms race. The empirical results not only shed insight into the likelihood observing international conflict when preceded by arms racing but also indicate whether certain types of arms racing --- air as opposed to sea or ground racing, for example---may be more likely to develop into conflict than other forms.

<p>Media and culture are interrelated, which shapes what is culturally relevant. War films reflect a culture?s view on war as well as the viability of a culture?s mythology of war. Grounded in the concepts of war myth and genre, this thesis takes the stance that the Iraq and Afghanistan War film genre transforms the image of the American warrior. Iraq and Afghanistan War films, specifically The Hurt Locker, Green Zone, Lone Survivor, and American Sniper illuminate the destructive reality of war and the humanness of the warrior hero. They reaffirm the warrior?s heroism and sacrifice while also acknowledging war as damaging to the warrior?s psyches, hearts, minds, and bodies.

<p> Medical experts claim that Posttraumatic Stress Disorder among United States military service personnel, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan has contributed to an &ldquo;epidemic of suicide&rdquo; in the U.S. However, veterans, military commanders, and mental health providers argue that feelings of grief, guilt, mistrust, rage, and alienation are actually normal moral reactions to the abnormal situations that war creates. Furthermore, they argue that these normal reactions are currently transformed into a psychiatric diagnosis that promises clinical solution &ndash; a cure. Recent epidemiologic studies suggest that evidence-based clinical treatments are ineffective for a majority of veterans with PTSD and that the main barrier to seeking treatment is self-stigma by veterans. This ethnography interrogates the failure in care and vectors of blame that surround it by documenting veterans&rsquo; own critical reactions to being diagnosed and/or labeled with PTSD. These narratives provide a moment to critically examine the medicalization and commodification of trauma, as well as the bureaucratization of care, that continue to negatively impact what I describe as veteranhood &ndash; a deep constellation of personal and military values. Everyday life for veterans becomes a clash of cultural models, worldviews and various stakeholders of their care. The lack of common ground or &ldquo;cultural consonance&rdquo; (versus PTSD/stigma) lies behind the social processes that contribute to veterans&rsquo; uneven reintegration into civilian life. This ethnography provides counter-narratives of emergent veteranhood that challenge the dominant cultural script of &ldquo;stigma as the main barrier to care.&rdquo; These narratives dismantle concepts of self-stigma by shifting the focus from the standard trauma model of victimization towards a productive veteranhood, where agency remains essential to identity and everyday life. Veterans that reframe the post-effects of war as an issue of <i>cultural dissonance,</i> as opposed to a mental disorder, are creating new personal scripts for healing that a medical anthropology and caregivers must account for. Veterans desire solutions for their distress within their communities, their culture(s), not within the confines of a medical clinic or within the categorical parameters of PTSD.</p>

<p> Following more than decade of U.S. military operations in the in the Middle East, it is important to understand the impact of prolonged combat operations on the wellbeing of Veterans. To understand this relationship accurately we must have access to reliable and valid measures of combat exposure. A meta-analysis of research with combat Veterans found relatively few studies adequately assessed nature and extent of Veteran&rsquo;s combat experiences (Institute of Medicine, 2008). </p><p> The purpose of this research was to develop a more comprehensive measure of combat exposure for use in research on post-combat psychological outcomes. Seventeen Veterans participated in focus groups to support the development the Assessment of Combat Experiences (ACE). A sample of 121 Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) veterans was used to assess the psychometric properties of the ACE. Participants completed the ACE, as well as additional measures of combat exposure and psychopathology. The ACE demonstrated strong internal consistency (Cronbach&rsquo;s Alpha = . 96) and test-retest reliability (<i>r</i> = .85). Convergent and construct validity for the ACE were supported as evidenced by strong correlations (<i> r</i> = .72 to .86) with two combat-related subscales from the <i> Defense Risk and Resiliency Inventory - 2</i> (Vogt, Smith, King, &amp; King 2012), and the <i>Combat Exposure Scale</i> (Keane et al., 1989). The ACE demonstrated similar correlations with measures of psychopathology (PTSD, depression, and anxiety) as the CES and the DRRI-2. The ACE includes more detailed questions than other measures, allowing researchers to explore the impact of proximity to hostile fire, the frequency of exposures, the duration of specific exposures, and the nature of weapons used during combat operations better than is possible with other validated measures. Overall, there was strong evidence for the reliability and validity of the ACE in measuring combat exposure among this sample of OIF and OEF Veterans.</p>

<p> The United States (U.S.) Army and the nation have a growing population of Hispanics. Yet Hispanics are still lagging in filling white-collar positions in the U.S. and Army. The Army has taken notice and implemented the Hispanic Access Initiative (HAI) through its Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) at colleges and universities that are classified as Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs). It has done this in order to recruit more Hispanic Officers into its Officer Corps.</p><p> This study follows seven Hispanic students and discusses their experiences with ROTC at an HSI. They faced the same issues many Hispanic students deal with when attending an institution of higher learning. In addition, they also had the added responsibility of completing all the required work for ROTC. In an effort to become leaders in the Army, these students overcame traditional challenges Hispanics face, and they graduated from college.</p><p> A qualitative study was conducted with the seven students to understand what made them successful in completing their four-year college degrees. Their phenomenological experiences highlighted four main themes from their responses: (a) challenges, (b) benefits, (c) support system, and (d) role models. These themes surfaced at one point or another throughout their education. In the end, the goal to graduate and be commissioned into the U.S. Army was reached by each of the former students.</p><p> As a result of this study, colleges and universities can look to ROTC to increase their graduation rates among Hispanic students. Since the Hispanic population is continuing to increase, it is in the interest of colleges to graduate more Hispanics in order to provide highly qualified graduates for a large number of white-collar jobs.</p>

<p> This dissertation examines the reasons behind the rise and fall of the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) in Somalia. The UIC was born out of the chaos of the Warlord Era in Southern Somalia from within the fabric of Somali Society. The peace and stability that the UIC brought to the region had not been seen since before the fall of Said Barre's regime. However, the rapid martial expansion of the UIC and the perceived threat caused by their success resulted in Ethiopia invading Somalia thereby destroying the UIC and spawning the al-Shabaab movement. .</p>

<p> The purpose of this artistic self-case study is to explore how the role of the soldier might be transformed from service <i>in war</i> to service <i>for community,</i> via creative exploration of the archetypal figures, Warrior and Shaman. With this in mind, a creative and introspective method was tested for its efficacy in generating new images and stories to promote conflict transformation for our warrior class. </p><p> The strategy of inquiry employed is based on the case study model, modified to be a self-case study. Creation-based data was generated by the researcher to evoke intersubjective dialogue between academically rational and creatively nonrational data and processes in this research. In lieu of the traditional written chapters that comprise the body of a dissertation, &ldquo;creative chapters&rdquo; in the form of mixed media pictorial representations are presented. Data analysis was conducted using Abt&rsquo;s (2005) articulation of Jungian picture interpretation, in order to discern meaning from each creative chapter&mdash;the titles of which served as a query for topics related to the research question. </p><p> A liberation paradigm was then utilized as a critical point of departure, to guide the issues examined (healing and community roles for our warrior class), the people for whom the study is relevant (the warrior class and practitioners working with them), the researcher&rsquo;s role in the study (up front/personal; grounded in experience), and how the research was presented in its final form (written text with supporting pictorial data; conclusions drawn from creative interpretation). </p><p> The combined chapter interpretations were reviewed and analyzed in the concluding chapter for their implications in community praxis with returning soldiers and veterans. They revealed consistent themes of imbalanced masculine and feminine energies, and the need for development of an introspective, Shamanic aptitude by our Warriors in order for them to continue their duty of protection and care of their local communities. </p><p> Recommendations are then made for adapting this research model in community work with soldiers and veterans, along with suggestions for building greater levels of reliability, validity, and generalizability into creative qualitative research. </p><p> Keywords: Warrior, Shaman, trauma, conflict transformation, resilient communities, Jungian, phronesis, counterinsurgency, initiation, creative.</p>

<p> The Department of Defense, at the time of this study, had over 38 combat Forward Operating Bases (FOB) with both U.S. military and non-military personnel residing and engaged in the mission. Also in these FOBs, are local nationals of the countries, who are employed to perform certain duties in these FOBs after having had certain security and medical background checks. However, while on military mission in Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern countries between 2009 and 2011, this researcher, observed and detected more than once, local nationals (LNs), Afghans, with certain infectious skin conditions working in the DIFACs (dining facilities) at major FOBs, serving food to soldiers inside the base. These LNs reside outside the FOB facility and gain entrance into the FOB daily, passing through already set security parameters put in place by the Department of Defense (DoD). There are Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTP) to prevent or mitigate Person-borne Improvised Explosive Device (PBIED), Vehicle-borne Improvised Explosive Device (VBIED), and to also respond to, or recover from, Chemical, Biological, Radioactive, and Nuclear (CBRN) attacks on FOBs. Researcher is unaware of any TTP specific for HB-BA terrorist, capable of detecting, deterring or destroying a terrorist with bioagents breaching a combat post ECP; nor the training of soldiers of how to conduct a search on a bio-agent (BA) &ndash; or even what a bio-agent would look like if they found one. The purpose of this research was to determine whether there are current military counter bioterrorism measures in place to combat a human-borne with a bioagent (HB-BA) terrorist attempting to breach a combat FOB at the ECP, and how effective they are. </p><p> To accomplish this, a survey tool had to be developed and employed to determine the perceptions about the effectiveness of current ECP TTPs in detecting, deterring preventing, and mitigating a HBBA terrorist at the ECP, from military personnel. A survey tool (questionnaire) was developed, validated, and subjected to a reliability testing using Cronbach&rsquo;s Alpha on a mix-method cross sectional survey, a pretest. Results showed a Cronbach&rsquo;s Alpha of 0.82 and 0.89 for the survey&rsquo;s two constructs. Also, 92.3% of respondents had recently been in combat deployment. All of them claimed that bioterrorism is very possible, but 61.5% believe it is either very possible or possible for a terrorist with a bioagent (BA) to successfully breach a FOB ECP. Only 3.8% felt that it would be impossible to breach the FOB ECP with a bioagent. Similarly, only 28% of respondents surveyed believe that current ECP TTPs are effective against a BA, 48% believe that current CBRN TTPs are either not effective, or somewhat effective, against BA at the ECP. In conclusion, the preliminary study, indicated that combat FOBs are vulnerable to breach by human-borne with BA terrorist at the ECP, as there exists no currently effective ECP TTP that could detect, deter or destroy a terrorist with a biological agent at a combat FOB ECP.</p>