Dr. Almas Khan is an intellectual historian whose scholarship analyzes how disciplinary renegades in law and literature have shaped conceptions of U.S. citizenship since the Civil War. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia and a J.D. with honors from the University of Chicago Law School; and her research is situated at the intersection of critical legal theory, constitutional history, and law and literature. Dr. Khan approaches literature as a site of constitutional reimagination, focusing on African American, working-class, and women’s experiences. She is presently drafting a book manuscript, An Intellectual Reconstruction: American Legal Realism, Literary Realism, and the Formation of Citizenship.

Her legal and literary scholarship has been published in several journals and anthologies, including the Chicago Journal of International Law; Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History; the Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry; Critical Insights: Social Justice and American Literature; and Critical Insights: Inequality. Forthcoming articles include “Applied Legal Storytelling: Toward a Stylistics of Embodiment” and “Black Lives Matter and Legal Reconstructions of Elegiac Forms.”



Dr. Khan has also published widely on writing studies pedagogy through the lens of critical theory, drawing on a dozen years of experience teaching composition, law, and literature. Her pedagogical scholarship has appeared in the Washburn Law Journal, Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research & Writing, The Law Teacher, and the anthology Writing as a Way of Staying Human in a Time that Isn’t.

At the Law Center, Dr. Khan is an Assistant Director of the Center for Legal English and an Adjunct Professor of Law. In addition to helping administer the Center, she teaches courses and workshops on U.S. constitutional law, academic legal writing, and discussion skills. She previously taught at the University of Miami School of Law, the University of La Verne College of Law, and the University of Virginia.