Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: During World War II American women played an important role in the war ---at the home front. Charged with keeping the home fires burning, women managed homes, held daily life together, and provided an aura of normalcy while husbands, brother, fathers and sons fought. The end of the war brought with it an almost frantic effort to return to that safe-guarded normalcy. As men reclaimed their roles providers and protectors, women’s efforts shifted primarily to creating and maintaining the comfortable and “homey” atmosphere of the domestic sphere that was deemed needed to comfort, placate, and heal the returning soldier. Popular magazines such as House Beautiful instructed women that “He’s head man again…Your part in the remaking of this man is to fit his home to him, understanding why he wants it this way, forgetting your own preferences,” while Good Housekeeping predicted that if women did their job in making men comfortable in their homes, “their husbands would stop their ‘oppressive remembering’ [about the war] in about two to three weeks.” Interior decorating, assigned here as a women’s role was seen as not only an aesthetic but also as a therapeutic device.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have brought a new twist to this scenario. As now nearly 15% percent of active duty solders in these conflicts are women, women’s roles during war are no longer confined to the home front. Women of all ages, ethnicities and marital status are currently living and working as soldiers in Forward Operating Bases located on all fronts. The FOB has become a mainstay in the U.S. presence in Iraq, and the home away from home for the soldier where he/she can find respite from the constant danger and the isolation of combat. The numerous amenities provided there, which vary from hot showers to actual Burger Kings, become what Brig. Gen. Karl Horst, a 3rd Infantry Division commander based at the Baghdad airport’s FOB Liberty, has called “little oases in the middle of a dangerous and confusing world.”
Interviews and reports of women who are stationed at the various FOB’s located in both war zones, reveal that they are actively involved in “decorating” their new home away from homes. While men’s barracks are enlivened by the stereotypical pin-up calendar, the women’s places are receiving coats of paint, curtains, artwork and home accessories. Women soldiers are not just inhabiting but decorating their bunkers.
Using close readings of interviews of women soldiers and their own documentation of their interior design, this paper will explore the implications of this trend and how it may construct or de-construct notions of gender in this intersection of home and war fronts. How does such activity contribute to the identity of the woman soldier? Are the same therapeutic purposes inscribed in the domestication and decoration of the home place following World War II paralleled here?

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: This paper examines how interest groups strategically frame political issues and how this activity translates in congressional debates. At the heart of this research lie questions about the ability of political elites to affect the role and structure of issue debates. These are longstanding theoretical questions in the political science literature (Riker 1980, 1993; Jones 1994), but empirically under-examined by interest groups scholars. While scholarship often looks for interest group influence in congressional roll call votes or committee behavior, a more pervasive form of influence may be found in how interest groups affect the framing of the policy debate. To explore this relationship, I examine interest group and congressional framing of the partial birth abortion issue over a four year period between 1995 and 1998. The analysis is conducted in two stages. First, I use content analysis of interest group inputs and outputs to examine similarities and differences in interest group and congressional framing. Second, I explore the factors that explain a Member’s propensity to promote an interest group’s frames using a Heckman selection model. The results of the content analysis suggest a high level of unity between interest group and congressional framing efforts on the partial birth abortion issue. The statistical evidence suggests a link between interest group activity and congressional framing activity.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: No abstract available at this time.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Media and researchers’ references to street drug users often include allusions to criminal behavior, immorality, and HIV infection. While these negative stereotypes and characterizations abound, focusing exclusively on problems and deficits among drug users reinforces these stereotypes. To gain a more complete depiction of street drug users and broaden our social understanding of this population, it is also important to discover and recognize strengths and positive characteristics that drug users may possess. Using a sample of 28 chronic and injecting street drug users, this qualitative analysis highlights the personal strengths of the participants revealed in in-depth interviews. This paper investigates the questions, “How do drug users characterize or describe themselves? What strengths and positive attributes do drug users promote about themselves?” Empirically based information on the self-construction of strengths is valuable to treatment facilities practicing from strength-based models and broadens our theoretical perspectives on issues of master status and its impact on self-perception.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: By aggregating to the nation-year, existing research ignores distinctions between forms of political violence. The differences are crucial however because the different forms involve very different processes and have very different implications. For example, genocide/politicide considers a situation where state authorities are the ones responsible for violence ( i.e., the territorial jurisdiction within which the violence takes place is under the states control), insurgency considers a situation where dissidents are the ones responsible for violence (i.e., the territorial jurisdiction within which the violence takes place is under the dissidents control) and civil war considers a situation where both state authorities and political dissidents are responsible for what transpires ( i.e., the territorial jurisdiction within which the violence takes place lies between the state and challengers). Such determinations are crucial for assessing blame, the logistics of humanitarian intervention and the targets of prosecution. By identifying exactly where battle fronts are located (by longitude/latitude and day) as well as examining conflict at a low-level spatial and temporal aggregation (i.e., by secteur/commune and day), we use a unique database on political violence in Rwanda during 91 days in 1994 and identify which form of violence existed, when as well as where. Our research reveals the complexity of violent events and the importance of disaggregation for understanding what took place.