Rate My Professor Paul Corcoran

Paul Corcoran is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Adelaide, within the School of History and Politics in the Faculty of Arts. He earned an A.B. from Princeton University, an A.M. from Duke University, and a Ph.D. from Duke University. Corcoran joined the University of Adelaide in May 1974 and served as Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies until December 2010. In this capacity, he lectured in political philosophy and contributed extensively to the department's academic programs. His long tenure reflects a sustained commitment to political scholarship at the institution, where he now maintains an adjunct affiliation.

Corcoran's academic interests center on political theory, rhetoric, emotions in politics, historical endings and apocalypse, disclosures, socialism and liberalism, and the works of philosophers including John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Hobbes, Charles Fourier, and Étienne Cabet. His major books include Before Marx: Socialism and Communism in France, 1830-48 (1983), which examines early French socialist thought; Political Language and Rhetoric (1979); Awaiting Apocalypse (2000); and Disclosures: Accidents and Revelations (2000). Prominent publications also feature 'John Stuart Mill’s Political Pessimism' (2019, The European Legacy), 'John Locke on Native Right, Colonial Possession, and the Concept of Vacuum domicilium' (2018), 'Early French socialism reconsidered—I. The propaganda of Fourier and Cabet' (2012), 'Patience Personified: A Disreputable Virtue' (2008), 'Political Recognition and Æsthetic Judgement' (2008), 'The Rhetoric of Shame in the Lachrymose Country' (2004), 'The Meaning of Apocalypse' (2000, book chapter), and 'Therapeutic Self-Disclosure: The Talking Cure' (2000, book chapter). Additional contributions encompass 'Signs of the Time' and 'Freedom: Nothing Left to Lose' (book chapters). His scholarship has achieved 237 citations on ResearchGate and 27,617 reads, influencing discourse in political philosophy, rhetoric, and liberal thought.