The Lonely City by Edward Hopper 

It is lonely to live in a city. There are some days where leaving your apartment feels impossible.  Choice is overwhelming. The sun sets too early in the winter, making you unfortunately aware  of your safety after 5pm. This last anecdote, isn’t true for everyone, though. It is a uniquely  feminine experience. An inconvenience, such as the setting sun, making way for the possibility  of real danger. Loneliness in a city as a woman, especially one who enjoys her solitude and  exercises it regularly, can be dangerous. But within that risk there is a deeper, perhaps more  fulfilling freedom. The rush of making it back to your apartment after walking alone from the  train well past midnight. Smiling and nodding at an older man in your neighborhood, hoping he  will take this as politeness and not an invitation. There is also the great triumph of navigating  the city as a woman. A liberation unfounded in sleepier suburbias. The train can take you  anywhere, your horse to freedom. 

It is impossible to exist, to come into oneself, in a vacuum. A city, on the other hand, is filled to  the brim with every possible experience. There is opportunity and danger everywhere. 

This syllabus will focus on texts that highlight and focus on the experience of women living in  cities. Specifically, I would like to bring attention to the ways in which the solitary experience of  a women in cities is both liberating and oppressive, the contradictions present in this dynamic,  and where the contradictions stem from. 

This syllabus will be broken down into ten sections, each section containing at least one book  and film, paired in order to highlight their thematic similarities. 

Many of these titles can be found on internet archive, or Libby

Books:  

Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys 

Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid 

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante  

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith 

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams 

The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pam 

Play it as it Lays by Joan Didion 

Time is the Thing a Body Moves Through by T. Fleischmann 

A Spy in the House of Love by Anaïs Nin  

Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn 

Movies:  

Five Year Diary: Reel 22 dir. Anne Charlotte Robertson 

Working Girls dir. Lizzie Borden 

Carol dir. Todd Haynes 

Watermelon Woman dir. Cheryl Dunye 

On the Beach at Night Alone dir. Hong Sang Soo 

The Aggressives dir. Eric Daniel Pebble  

Pandora’s Box dir. G. W. Pabst 

Mulholland Drive dir. David Lynch 

Looking for Mr. Goodbar dir. Richard Brooks 

The Young Girls of Rochefort dir. Jacques Demy