Rainer Rumold is the author of The Janus Face of the German Avant-Garde. From Expressionism to Postmodernism (Northwestern University Press, 2001), of Gottfried Benn und der Expressionism: Provokation des Lesers, Absolute Dichtung (Athenaeum/Scriptor, 1982), of Sprachliches Experiment und Literarische Tradition. Zu den Texten Helmut Heissenbuettels, (Stanford Series in German Studies, 1975). He is , together with O.K Werckmeister, editor of The Ideological Crisis of Expressionism (Camden House, 1992) and, together with Andreas Kramer, editor of Eugene Jolas’s autobiography, Man from Babel (Yale University Press,1998).

Professor Rumold has written numerous articles on avant-garde and modernism in literature and the visual arts, with German expressionism as a focal point for international relations, on Gottfried Benn, Carl Sternheim, Carl Einstein, Zurich and Berlin Dada, the dadaist text, the history and theory of Dada in Central Europe, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Bert Brecht, Georg Grosz, Eugene Jolas (translation and documents), Helmut Heissenbuttel, Gunter Kunert, etc.

His current projects include: Archeo-logies of Modernity. The Visual Turn of the Avant-garde (Jean Arp, Eugene Jolas, Franz Kafka, Einstein, Walter Benjamin, Georges Bataille). Articles relating to this forthcoming project have been published as "Archeo-logies of Modernity in Documents and transition1929/30," Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 37,1: 2000, 45-67; "Carl Einstein: Die Visuelle Wende der Avant-garde- Gegen literarische Kultur,” in Die Visuelle Wende der Moderne; "Carl Einstein: Die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, Munich: Fink Verlag, 2003, 273-288, and "'Painting as a Language. Why not?’ Carl Einstein in Documents,” in October 107 Winter 2004, ed.Sebastian Zeidler, MIT Press, 75-94.

Together with Ela Kotkowska, Northwestern graduate student in French, and Prof. Klaus Kiefer, University of Munich, he is currently preparing a first edition of "Eugene Jolas, Critical Essays 1924-1951". Rainer Rumold is the general editor of the series at Northwestern University Press on Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, Coeditor with Marjorie Perloff. Rainer Rumold received his PhD from Stanford University. Other than at Northwestern University, Prof. Rumold has been a visiting faculty at Stanford University, and taught as Chism Gould Visiting Professor in the Humanities at the University of Puget Sound, Wa.