Resources for September 2, 2014

Bacevich, Andrew, Hugh Roberts and Melani McAlister. "America's War for the Greater Middle East." Open Source (August 7, 2014) ["How do you end an endless war? Thirty years ago Jimmy Carter declared the Persian Gulf a “vital” focus of American foreign policy. Since then, U.S. forces have invaded, occupied, garrisoned, bombed or raided 18 nations, absorbing thousands of casualties and getting little in return in terms of peace or goodwill. Andrew Bacevich, the military historian, veteran and professor of international relations at Boston University calls it America’s War for the Greater Middle East and says there’s no end in sight. This fall he’s teaching a twelve-week online course on the history of that long war: he begins it in the Iran hostage crisis during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, through stages of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the first Gulf War, then September 11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."]

"Andrew J. Bacevich: Political Science/Military History/International Relations." Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Peace and Conflict Studies Archive)

Tyree, J.M. "The Conflicted Comedies of Wes Anderson." Film Quarterly 66.4 (Summer 2013)

Moore, Lorrie. "Gazing at Love: Blue is the Warmest Color." The New York Review of Books (December 19, 2013)

Laine, Tarja. "Art as a Guaranty of Sanity: The Skin I Live In." Alphaville #7 (Summer 2014) [Warning - this essay contains major spoilers throughout and is therefore best read only after having seen the film.]





Choic, Candice. "Civil disobedience expected in fast-food pay fight." WTOC (September 2, 2014)

Dargis, Manohla. "As Indies Explode, an Appeal for Sanity: Flooding Theaters Isn’t Good for Filmmakers or Filmgoers." The New York Times (January 12, 2014)


fleer \FLEER\

noun: a word or look of derision or mockery

When Adam suggested that the firm's partners do the work pro bono he half-expected to be hit with a collective fleer, but the others readily agreed.

"He expressed himself, of course, with eccentric abandon—it would have been impossible for him to do otherwise; but he was content to indicate his deepest feelings with a fleer." — Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians, 1918

Fleer first appeared in English as a verb (fleryen in Middle English) meaning "to laugh, grin, or grimace in a coarse manner." The verb is of Scandinavian origin and is akin to the Norwegian flire, meaning "to giggle." The noun fleer first and most famously appeared in William Shakespeare's tragedy Othello, in which the evil Iago invites Othello to observe the signs of his wife's unfaithfulness in the visage of her supposed lover, Cassio: "And mark the fleers, the gibes, and notable scorns / That dwell in every region of his face…."