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Leslie Kurke is a professor of ancient Greek and Roman studies and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a member of the Departments of Ancient Greek and Roman Studies and Comparative Literature, and an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies.Her areas of scholarship include Ancient Greek literature and cultural history, Archaic Greek poetry, Herodotus and early prose, Greek popular culture, the constitution of ideology through material practices, genre, and the politics of form.

Kurke's earlier books have examined topics such as the relationship between Greek literature and its cultural context, the constitution of ideology through material practices, and the interactions between performed poetry and architectural space. Her research has expanded our understanding of how the ancient Greeks used choral performance as a metaphor for societal organization, from hierarchical politics to egalitarian models of cooperation. Current work focuses on ancient Greek chorality, exploring the intersections between fifth- and fourth-century prose writers such as Herodotus, Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle, and older Greek poetic texts. Kurke is examining the central role of choral performance in ancient Greek society as a means of forging community, both with the gods and among performers and spectators.