This installment of Student Voices features work from undergraduate students at Marymount Manhattan College who were enrolled on Noelle Griffis’s course Cinema & the City.

Cinetourism and Urban Development: Student Voices Dossier

Noelle Griffis introduces this issue with a discussion of her Fall 2020 course, Cinema and the City, and provides a context and overview of her students’ work, as well as links to her course syllabus and assignment. Griffis’s course emphasizes the role that urban development has played in racial and economic inequality in the city and the ways these issues have been depicted—or neglected—on screen.

Different Places! Real and Hyperreal Las Vegas in Showgirls

William Smith analyzes the film Showgirls for the ways in which it engages themes of the hyperreal in its portrayal of Las Vegas. Smith argues the film makes a jarring break from typical representations of the city, peeling back the layers of Las Vegas to reveal its promises to be inaccessible and profit-driven myths.

The Millenial Flaneuse in Broad City

Sasha Nater explores the television series Broad City to consider the extent to which the show’s main characters might be considered modern-day flaneuses. The essay argues the show demonstrates the unique struggles millennial women face as they navigate the city, while also offering up the potential for women to make their own place in the city by navigating and narrating their everyday experiences amidst the urban environment.