This dissertation investigates the various levels at which the multi-scaled dynamics of war take shape in the everyday, embodied lives of the people whose job it is to produce it—soldiers and their families and communities at and around Ft. Hood, in central Texas. As the largest military installation in the world and the single biggest point of deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan for all U.S. forces, Ft. Hood and its surround may represent the greatest single concentration of Americans directly involved in the production of global military force outside of Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan. The repercussions of war and routinized war-making extend throughout the lives of the people who inhabit, serve and surround the base. The length, scale and distinct character of the Iraq War have exposed these soldiers and their family members to new and chronic hardships and forms of vulnerability, including the stresses of longer and more frequent tours, unprecedented rates of posttraumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, overburdened institutional supports, and an abundance of extreme characterizations of soldiers in American public culture. These vulnerabilities are bodily and affective, intersubjective and shared, and bases for scrutiny and recognition. I base my analysis on the difficult and distinctive role that the soldier occupies as at once the agent, instrument and object of state violence. The soldier’s life is simultaneously shaped by discipline, empowered by the right to kill, and allowed to be exposed to harm and death. I use soldiers’ “exceptional” status as a starting point for understanding the dense sets of material, institutional, discursive, and social relations in which they are embedded. The dissertation chapters are organized around broad themes that emerged from my informants’ words, actions and experiences and that capture the impacts of war across diverse arenas of everyday life. I treat each theme as a field within which to explore not merely the effects of war, but its lived affects—-the “feelings” of war that are the variously sensory, psychic and emotional imprints of the everyday, organized production of military violence. / text

Special education (SPED) service providers in the military are often underprepared to use the needed assistive technology (AT) in the classroom. This concurrent mixed-method study sought to explore the attitudes, skills, and quality indicators of assistive technology (QIAT) among 19 currently employed military SPED certified multidisciplinary team members. The conceptual framework of this study was based on the professional learning community model, which holds that the team members work collaboratively to educate the families it serves. All team members completed a quantitative QIAT survey and open-ended questionnaire, and individual qualitative interviews were conducted with a subsample of 8 volunteer staff. QIAT survey data were descriptively analyzed, while questionnaire data were transcribed, open coded, and thematically analyzed. All data were triangulated and member checking and peer debriefing were used to strengthen validity and credibility of the findings. Survey data revealed teachers' willingness to utilize AT in the classroom, although qualitative data suggested that the multidisciplinary team lacked the knowledge to consistently and confidently utilize AT within their classes daily. Additional emergent themes included collaboration, viable resources, unifying guidelines, AT support, training, and guidance. Administrators at the local site can use these findings as guidance in the development of in-service and district AT trainings and support. Through consistent usage of these interventions, the military community can impact positive change in the lived experiences of SPED service providers and the families that it serves.