Staff profile

I joined Durham as Assistant Professor in Literature and Drama in September 2022. I trained and worked as a theatre director in Germany before completing a BA in English and Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths (University of London), followed by an MSt in English Literature (1830–1914) and an AHRC-funded DPhil at the University of Oxford. Before joining Durham, I have held positions as a college lecturer in Victorian and Modern Literature at the University of Oxford, as associate lecturer in Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths, and as Assistant Professor in English Literature at the University of Regensburg, where I have taught contemporary British Drama.

Drama, in word and practice, presents a particular focus of interest in my research. My current research investigates the ways in which contemporary plays authored by women could be considered laboratories for contemporary feminist theory and activism.

Previous research encompassed Victorian and Modern literatures with a focus on theories of transnationalism and the political application of aesthetics. My monograph ‘The Indispensable East’: Literary Decadence and Orientalism in England and Germany, 1880−1920, (forthcoming with Oxford University Press in March 2024) draws upon theoretical models of orientalism and cosmopolitanism to assess the significance of relating to and embodying 'otherness' in Decadent writing.

• Decadence
• Drama
• Gender Studies and Feminism
• Literary Theory
• Literature in (medial) translation
• Theatre and Performance Theory/Practice
• Transnational Modernism/The long nineteenth Century

Chapter in book

• Herold, K. Socio-aesthetic Histories: Vienna 1900 and Weimar Berlin. In Decadence and Literature (283-99). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108550826.018
• Herold, K. 'Dancing the Image: Sensoriality and Kinesthetics in the Poetry of Stephane Mallarmé and Arthur Symons’. In Decadence and the Senses (141-61). https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv16kkz22.14
• Herold, K. (2021). Germany: Decadence from the Wilhelmine Empire to the Weimar Republic. In J. Desmarais, & D. Weir (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Decadence. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190066956.013.11
• Herold, K. (2018). “Against Civilisation”: Symons, the Gypsy Lore, and Politicised Aestheticism. In E. Bizzotto, & S. Evangelista (Eds.), Arthur Symons: Poet, Critic, Vagabond (145-59). https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv16km0qt.15

Edited book

• Herold, K., & Krause, F. (Eds.). Smell and Social Life: Aspects of English, French and German Literature (1880–1939). iudicium

Journal Article

• Herold-Zanker, K. (2021). Intermediality and Decadent Performance in Anita Berber and Sebastian Droste’s Die Tänze des Lasters, des Grauens und der Ekstase (1923). https://doi.org/10.25602/gold.v.v4i2.1588.g1702
• Herold, K. (2021). Allegories on the international scene: Vernon Lee’s, Mina Loy’s, and Else Lasker-Schüler’s war plays. Feminist Modernist Studies, 4(2), 203-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/24692921.2021.1950472