I was interested to see the release of Richard Last’s new book The Pauline Church and the Corinthian Ekklesia: Greco-Roman Associations in Comparative Context (Cambridge University Press 2015), which publishes the author’s 2013 dissertation from University of Toronto. Published as volume 146 in the Society for New Testament Monograph Series, the work adopts a fresh approach to the role of religious associations and philosophical cults and and Judean synagogues generally for understanding the first Christian communities of Corinth specifically. The table of contents (here for the PDF) list chapters that suggest interesting discussions about Greco-Roman associations as a category, the meeting places of the Christian communities, the very small size of the earliest Christian group (so, in the abstract below, “all ten members”!), the economic capacities of associations, and the internal dynamics, structure, organization, hierarchies, and financing of assocations. Among Last’s provocative interpretations include the view that the first Christian groups at Corinth were internally structured from the beginning, and that ecclesiastical organization was not simply a later development from a primitive egalitarian community.
The publisher page outlining the scope of the book suggests conclusions that are sure to spawn debate in New Testament studies generally and the Corinthian correspondence specifically:
Moving past earlier descriptions of first-century Christ groups that were based on examining the New Testament in isolation from extant sources produced by analogous cult groups throughout Mediterranean antiquity, this book engages with underexplored epigraphic and papyrological records and situates the behaviour of Paul’s Corinthian ekklēsia within broader patterns of behaviour practiced by Greco-Roman associations. Richard Last’s comparative analysis generates highly original contributions to our understanding of the social history of the Jesus movement: he shows that the Corinthians were a small group who had no fixed meeting place, who depended on financial contributions from all ten members in order to survive, and who attracted recruits by offering social benefits such as crowns and office-holding that made other ancient cult groups successful. This volume provides a much-needed robust alternative to the traditional portrayal of Pauline Christ groups as ecclesiastically egalitarian, devoid of normative honorific practices, and free for the poor.
The publisher has made available most of the introduction here, and you can look to Google Books for some additional excerpts.
Archaeology and Classics:
With the reviewer, I am skeptical that there were many elite educated women among the first Christian communities in Corinth. Recent scholarship has significantly undermined the older view that 
This volume examines 1 Corinthians 1-4 within first-century politics, demonstrating the significance of Corinth’s constitution to the interpretation of Paul’s letter. Bradley J. Bitner shows that Paul carefully considered the Roman colonial context of Corinth, which underlay numerous ecclesial conflicts. Roman politics, however, cannot account for the entire shape of Paul’s response. Bridging the Hellenism-Judaism divide that has characterised much of Pauline scholarship, Bitner argues that Paul also appropriated Jewish-biblical notions of covenant. Epigraphical and papyrological evidence indicates that his chosen content and manner are best understood with reference to an ecclesial politeia informed by a distinctively Christ-centred political theology. This emerges as a ‘politics of thanksgiving’ in 1 Corinthians 1:4-9 and as a ‘politics of construction’ in 3:5-4:5, where Paul redirects gratitude and glory to God in Christ. This innovative account of Paul’s political theology offers fresh insight into his pastoral strategy among nascent Gentile-Jewish assemblies.
a similarly-titled monograph in 1994 (St. Paul’s Theology of Proclamation: 1 Corinthians 1-4 and Greco-Roman Rhetoric; SNTS Monograph Series). As he states in the introduction to this new book, prior to the twentieth century, interpreters understood “words of wisdom” in 1 Cor 1:17 as a reference to Greco-Roman rhetoric and philosophy. Due in part to growing interest in Gnosticism, the first half of the twentieth century understood “words of wisdom” in the light of Gnostic mythology. Paul’s opponents were “gnostic pneumatics” who downplayed the significance of the Cross. In this book, Liftin argues the earlier view was correct. When Paul describes his own mission as preaching the Cross “not with words of the wise,” he has Greco-Roman rhetoric in mind…. This is a stimulating and challenging book operating at two levels. On the one hand, Liftin provides an academic introduction to Greco-Roman rhetoric as a background for reading 1 Corinthians 1-4 in a proper cultural context. But at another level, Liftin wants to challenge the churches to be faithful to God in their preaching of the Gospel. His call is to reject the sin of the Corinthians who used their culture to judge the success of the Gospel. In the end, it is this topic which needs to be addressed more directly by Liftin.”
Corinthian Matters 