Cortland Rankin

Courses Taught at BGSU: 

• THFM 1610 Introduction to Film 
• THFM 2620 History of Film 
• THFM 2900 Studies in Film: War Film 
• THFM 2900 Studies in Film: American Film Comedy 
• THFM 3810 Film and Society: Comedy and American Society 
• THFM 3810 Film and Society: Filming the Rust Belt
• THFM 4850 Topics in Film: Cities and Cinema 

Dr. Rankin has taught Film Studies in the Department of Theatre and Film since 2019. He is a scholar of American cinema and has taught courses on a wide range of genres, filmmakers, and eras of film history that explore cinema in relation to American society, politics, and culture. Dr. Rankin’s research interests include war cinema and media and the relationship between film and urbanism.  

He is the author of the book Decline and Reimagination in Cinematic New York (Routledge, 2023), which examines cinematic representations of New York's postindustrial turn from the mid-1960s through the mid-1980s across mainstream, independent, documentary, and experimental films. Other publications featuring his work include:  

• “Mediating Urban Automobility” (edited journal dossier). Mediapolis – A Journal of Cities and Culture, vol. 8, no. 3, September 2023.  
• “City of New York, No Parking Anytime: The City and the Car in Postwar City Symphony Films.” Mediapolis, vol. 8, no. 3, “Mediating Urban Automobility Dossier,” September 26, 2023.
• “Forgettable Tales of a Forgotten War: Narrative, Memory, and the Erasure of the Korean War in American Cinema.” Journal of Popular Film & Television, vol. 50, no. 4, 2022: 178-95.
• “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990).” Screening American Independent Film, edited by Justin Wyatt and Wyatt Phillips, Routledge, 2023. 
• “Their War, Our War: Private Memory and Public Commemoration in Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016).” Hollywood Remembrance and American War, edited by Andrew Rayment and Paul Nadasdy, Routledge, 2020. 
• “‘A Quiet Day at the Front’: Realism as an Act of Memorialization in Cease Fire (1953).” Hollywood Remembrance and American War, edited by Andrew Rayment and Paul Nadasdy, Routledge, 2020. 
• Voice and Visibility: How New York City Filmmakers Changed the Narrative of Marginalized Groups On and Off Camera. Co-authored with Erica Stein, Joshua Glick, Noelle Griffis, and Michael Gillespie. Report Commissioned by New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, 2018. 
• “Spectacles of the Sacred Secular: Wim Wenders’ Cathedrals of Culture (2014).” Film Platform, December 2014.  
• “Painting the Town Green: From Urban Teleology to Urban Ecology in New York Cinema, 1960-Present.” Co-authored with Brady Fletcher. NECSUS, European Journal of Media Studies, vol. 3 “Green,” Spring 2013.

Dr. Rankin serves on the editorial boards of Mediapolis – A Journal of Cities and Culture and the Journal of Film and Video and is a co-chair of the War and Media Studies Scholarly Interest Group at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

Before joining the faculty at BGSU, Dr. Rankin previously taught at NYU, The New School, Columbia University, and several colleges in the City University of New York system including Brooklyn College, the College of Staten Island, and Hunter College.  

Education 

Ph.D., Cinema Studies, New York University (2016) 

M.Phil, Screen Media & Cultures, University of Cambridge (2008) 

B.A., American Studies, Northwestern University (2007)