Climate security as an emerging field of study seeks to connect the substantial security-related challenges faced under climate change, and the ways in which climate change re-prioritizes issues at all scales of governance, and throughout all parts of society. This dissertation explores these perspectives to better understand how climate security differs from past approaches in security, and how climate change requires new paradigms to consider local, national, regional, and international assessments on risk and security. Through three papers, this dissertation assesses local approaches toward shifts in natural hazards through computational modeling, explores regional and global governance challenges that generate ethical and security concerns through attempts to mitigate climate impacts via geoengineering, and identifies current limitations on risk and security dialogues, particularly where conflict and disasters intertwine. The final paper also proposes a new conceptual model to advance approaches on assessing critical failure, the limits of mutual aid, and the assessment of "just securitization" when a referent of analysis faces significant impacts from disruptive events. This dissertation connects these issues of scale and dimensions of security to present climate security as a deeply interconnected and widely impacting issue that requires common framing and dialogues to prioritize capacity and understand limitations of future adaptation.

Analyzing and comprehending co-production of knowledge (CPK) in the context of working with Arctic Indigenous communities on climate change research is the main goal for this interdisciplinary doctoral dissertation. CPK is shared decision-making on every step of the research process with research partners from communities, agencies, or organizations. CPK with Arctic Indigenous communities requires dedicated consideration of equity, ethics, cultural worldviews, and colonization. Key concepts from Indigenous critical methodologies are used to analyze both the CPK theory and implementation. CPK has the potential to be an ethical space to question the status quo of research processes and support Indigenous self-determination. Critiquing NSF's Navigating the New Arctic as a case study, there were many missteps in not following CPK in the development of the program and projects, along with not following United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples' Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (Ch. 2). There are significant lessons to be learned from the literature on collaborative methodology, including Indigenous methodologies. Through synthesis work, a model was developed compiling factors of success to achieving CPK along with a discussion of perspectives on those factors and success metrics. The objective of the synthesis work is the development of tools to support transparent communication and co-design of research projects (Ch. 3). CPK happens in-between the boundaries of disciplines, cultures, and science-policy-community. Thirteen experts in boundary spanning co-produced lessons-learned and recommendations based on their expertise and experiences. The project co-produced strategies to overcome funding barriers and the cultural divide to Alaska Native communities utilizing a boundary analysis framework (Ch. 4). Applying the CPK and boundary spanning concepts, themes of success in improving Arctic observing were developed from homogenous focus groups. With thirty-four participants representing scientists, science coordination experts, policy experts, and Indigenous community leaders and scholars, co-analysis was impractical. Following the Rapid Assessment Process utilizing focus groups, themes of success and corresponding science and Indigenous perspectives were developed (Ch. 5).

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 opened Siberia as a new "travelers' frontier." Travel writers seeking destinations unspoiled by the encroachment of global capitalism and the resultant "placeless" landscapes made Siberia the subject of numerous travel books. This thesis critically examines the geopolitical discourses embedded in those books. Through a close reading and discourse analysis of three representative samples spanning the post-Cold War period, it highlights the key tropes, images and discourses that Anglophone travel writers have deployed in their constructions of Russia as a geopolitical Other. Travel writers writing about Siberia during the post-Cold War period explicitly and implicitly engaged with, reproduced, argued against, adopted, and adapted popular geopolitical treatises such as Francis Fukuyama's "End of History" thesis, Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" thesis, and Robert Kaplan's "The Coming Anarchy" thesis, ultimately producing works that frame Russia as an irredeemable and timeless rival to a normalized West. More generally, this thesis argues that scholars of critical and popular geopolitics need to engage more directly and more robustly with literary productions such as travel writing in order to elucidate the geopolitical messaging of such texts.

As a whole, the residential school experience holds a complicated legacy for Native American and Alaska Native communities. The history of residential schools for Indigenous children includes acculturation, instances of abuse, and generational trauma. In many cases, Indigenous children throughout the United States and Canada were removed from their families and forced to attend Western schools that banned their Native cultures, traditions, and languages. However, some former residential school students also attest to the positive experience of attending some of these schools, noting the educational opportunities they received, as well as the community and friendships they established at those schools. Their experiences highlight the complicated legacy of residential schools. This project analyzes the experiences students had while attending Copper Valley School, a Catholic residential school located near Glennallen, Alaska. The school was in operation between 1956 and 1971 and was established to provide a college preparatory education for Alaska Native students. Based on archival material and interviews with alumni, this project examines the education and student experience at Copper Valley School. The project allowed space for all student experiences, positive and negative. The former Copper Valley students interviewed for this project attested to a largely positive experience at the school, while noting that the school did have several institutional shortcomings. This project argues that the quality of education, the participation of lay volunteers, the integration of the school, and the community at the school all contributed to positive experiences for the project participants.

In 1885, U.S. Army Lieutenant Henry T. Allen crossed Alaska for the purpose of obtaining all information "valuable and important," especially to the military branch of government. The following year, the Secretary of War submitted Allen's much-anticipated report of a reconnaissance in Alaska to the U.S. Senate. Although the Senate ratified a treaty transferring Russian America to the United States nearly two decades earlier, and Alaska had been a Russian colony for over a century, the interior of Alaska - the homeland of Alaska's Dene people - remained largely unknown to the outside world. With constant assistance while traveling among the Dene, Allen surveyed twenty-five hundred miles of Dene territory including the Copper, Tanana, and Koyukuk Rivers. From the North Pacific, the Dene guided Allen across the Alaska Range and north to the Arctic Circle, then west to the Bering Sea. Though scholars then and now have recognized Allen's expedition as the most comprehensive exploration of Alaska and the earliest documentation of Dene lifeways in much of Alaska's Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, this dissertation presents the first scholarly work entirely focused on the expedition. An interdisciplinary approach and narrative history provide the framework for evaluating the expedition's place in U.S. and Alaska history, particularly regarding Allen's noteworthy interactions with Indigenous peoples and his ethnographic and cartographic contributions. With Dene support, Allen recorded the social and physical environment throughout much of Alaska's interior prior to direct colonial influences and resultant rapid and irrevocable change. The expedition's primary sources, combined with documented Dene perspectives, illustrate positive Indigenous-military relations. Mutually respectful interactions between Allen and Alaska's Dene who played an integral role in the expedition's success remain a legacy of the expedition. The character traits that contributed to Allen's success in 1885 eventually led to his selection by General Pershing and President Wilson to lead America's occupation in Germany following World War I. Whether mediating conflict in Europe or managing complex cross-cultural encounters along North America's borderlands during his trans-Alaska expedition, Allen's respectfulness and humanitarianism serve as a benchmark for positive civil-military relations.

This thesis examines the Volunteers in Service to America program as it operated in rural Alaska from 1965 to 1971. Oral histories, correspondence from the volunteers, trainers and stakeholders offer a rich historical perspective of the program's successes and failures. Remote and underdeveloped village conditions presented daunting operational challenges to the program and its volunteers. During the study period, rural Alaska underwent dramatic social and political changes as recent statehood and looming resource development necessitated resolution of Native land claims. A series of new federal anti-poverty initiatives and the transfer of existing agencies to state and local oversight presented opportunities for volunteer participation. From a national perspective, the program struggled as political tides shifted and conflicting ideologies impacted its mission. Through analysis of interviews and written accounts, this study raises questions about the volunteers' perceived mission as it relates to these rapidly changing conditions. It provides a lens for evaluation of the program's successes and failures. It recognizes the volunteers' efforts and reveals the serendipitous outcome of continued Alaskan civic participation from many of its original volunteers. This study highlights their efforts and demonstrates how the rural "VISTA Alaska" contributed to the development of a cohort of young professionals committed to lasting careers in service areas that have benefited rural Alaska and underserved populations.

Some journeys need to be made. In At the Edge of Somewhere, the writer embarks on a cycle ride from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's remote and dangerous Dalton Highway. Drawn obsessively to the Arctic sea ice some years earlier and, now, onto "the road," her journey attempts to bring closure to the long-standing need to be on the move, at once not able or even wanting to settle but also seeking a place within herself, and therefore a physical location, she might call home. She travels with a found notebook, acquired unexpectedly at the start of her ride, which reveals the heart-wrenching story of Samuel Morgan. As she journeys through boreal forest, high alpine and tundra, we learn not only of Samuel's abandonment to boarding school as a young boy but of the writer's traumatic childhood. Painful memories, reminiscences of working on "the road" and new encounters blend with Samuel's search for peace amid an encounter with the artistic works of an 18th century German Romantic painter. Touching on themes of trauma, art, and their relationships with the landscape, both the writer and Samuel reach Prudhoe Bay and the Arctic Ocean ready to let go of their pasts.

"This thesis explains how four events at the turn of the twentieth century--the start of an American administration, the introduction of schools and missions, the introduction of reindeer, and the 1918 influenza epidemic--brought sweeping changes to Inupiat on the Seward Peninsula, and contributed to the decline of two formerly-prominent Seward Peninsula communities: Kingegan and Kauwerak"--Leaf iii

"This thesis answers the question of how the ardent conservationist Jay Hammond, governor of Alaska between 1974 and 1982, could become successful in an environment of strong economic growth. Hammond was able to take advantage of favorable circumstances, such as the rise of the national environmental movement in the early 1970s, in order to introduce an unprecedented element of moderation to Alaska politics. Case studies substantiating Hammond's conservationist impact include the Rampart Dam Project, the state's buyback of the Kachemak Bay oil leases, and the creation of the Permanent Fund and its dividend. Jay Hammond's example proves that it is possible to allow economic development and protect environmental values at the same time. Especially in Alaska with its strong divide between development and conservation, future politicians can use Hammond's approach as a successful blueprint to bridge this gap"--Leaf iii

"A blockhouse sits outside of the University of Alaska Museum of the North in Fairbanks, Alaska. Built in 1841 by the Russian-American Company, the structure has been removed from its original location in the Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta, reconstructed, and presented to the public as a part of the museum's collection. However, little information is currently provided about the blockhouse or its history. While the current display lacks sufficient context, the Ethnology & History Department of the museum has received grant funds to improve the preservation and presentation of the Kolmakovskii Blockhouse. This thesis will provide a history of Russian advancement into the Yukon-Kuskokwim region, of Kolmakovskii Redoubt, and of the recent changes in museum theory and practice as they relate to the display of similar artifacts. While this structure is inherently valuable and worthy of preservation, its most noteworthy feature is its ability to evoke complex and conflicting responses to history as well as museum theory and practice. Suggestions will be made for improving the visitor's experience to the blockhouse, drawing on the structure's evocative nature"--Leaf iii.