Susanne Kord has written books on crime and antisemitism, ethics in horror films, women and violent crime, and many other books and essays on film (especially genre and Hollywood movies),  women's literary history and reception, and 18th and 19th century literature and culture. In the interest of making some of women's unknown literature available to modern readers, she has edited four collections of plays by women and translated three dramas into English. She has published poetry in several anthologies and journals, and read her poetry in many venues, including at the German Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Susanne Kord has served or is serving on a number of research councils and boards, including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the National Endowment for the Humanities (USA), the Fonds für Wissenschaftliche Forschung (Belgium), the DAAD Research Council, the Radcliffe Institute of Harvard University, and the editorial boards of numerous academic journals and yearbooks. She has been a Visiting Fellow at All Soul's College, Oxford (2014), at St. John's College, Oxford (2009), and the Institute for Advanced Research in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh (1999; 2000). She was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Historical Society in 2015 and awarded a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Foundation (2015-18).

Susanne Kord has received numerous awards for her writing, among them two book awards, one award for Best Article (2011), one Honourable Mention, an award for her poetry, and the Brentano-Preis awarded by the Freie Universität Berlin in 1997 for 'outstanding achievements in the advancement of women and knowledge of women's history'. She has served as Editor, among others, of The Lessing Yearbook, The German Quarterly, and the Publications of the English Goethe Society, and guest-edited German Life and Letters.