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Stan Corkin

Stanley Corkin is the author of Starring New York: Filming the Grime and Glamour of the Long 1970s (Oxford, 2011), Cowboys as Cold Warriors: The Western and U.S. History in the Culture and the Moving Image Series (Temple, 2004), and Realism and the Birth of the Modern United States: Cinema, Literature, and Culture (Georgia, 1996). Professor Corkin’s book on the HBO series The Wire, entitled The Wire: Space, Race and the Wonders of Post-Industrial Baltimore, is forthcoming from the University of Texas Press in 2015. Dr. Corkin also co-edited, with Phyllis Frus, The New Riverside Edition of Stephen Crane: The Red Badge of Courage, Maggie, A Girl of the Streets, and other Selected Writings (Houghton Mifflin, 2000). Professor Corkin’s peer-reviewed articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in a number of journals, including Jump Cut, the Journal of Urban History, MFS: Modern Fiction Studies, Prospects: An American Studies Annual, Journal of American History, Cinema Journal, College English, College Literature, and Cineaste.

Imagining the New, New Boston, 1970-2014, Professor Corkin’s current research project and the final installation in the urban trilogy, will center on the branding of Boston and historical events that have made the city an iconic one in the United States. The project explores the multifarious meanings and divergent conceptual spaces—intellectual, political, geographical, visual, and cultural—of the “new” Boston as forged in the historical time period from 1970 to the present. In the book-manuscript-in-progress, Professor Corkin also examines the historical branding of Boston (as a global city) in ways that explore the roles of film sets in the city—such as The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), The Brinks Job (1978), Good Will Hunting (1997), The Departed (2006), and Gone, Baby, Gone (2007) among others; and also in television series; journalism, especially the notorious media coverage of the Whitey Bulger case; sports teams (Celtics, Patriots, Red Soxx); architectural plans (significantly the Prudential Center); and other urban planning and design initiatives (most saliently the “Big Dig”). It promises to be an extremely important study – cementing his reputation for stellar contributions to the interdisciplinary fields of urban history, culture, and film.

Prof. Corkin was elected as Taft Professor in the winter of 2015, with the Professorship starting in the fall of the 2015 - 2016 school year.

For more about Dr. Corkin, see his UC Research by clicking on this sentence, or visiting https://researchdirectory.uc.edu/p/corkinsj