Nghana Lewis

Nghana Lewis is a professor of English and Africana Studies; a faculty affiliate of the School of Law; and an adjunct professor with the Department of Psychology. She also serves as District Judge with Louisiana’s 40^th Judicial District Court. Dr. Lewis’s cross-sectional research and teaching interests include black literary & cultural studies, black women's health, and juvenile justice. She is the author of Entitled to the Pedestal: Place, Race, and Progress in White Southern Women’s Writing, 1920-1945 (2009) and Black Women’s Health in the Age of Hip Hop & HIV/AIDS: A Narrative Remix (2025); and she is a founder and co-organizer of the Black Women’s Health Conference Task Force at Tulane University, which biennially convenes the Black Women’s Health Conference. In 2021, Dr. Lewis launched The Literacy Clinic, a court-based prevention-intervention program that supports literacy education for adults and youth involved in Louisiana’s criminal and juvenile legal systems, and families with children enrolled in Louisiana’s resource-challenged elementary public schools. With funding from The Murphy Institute, she established the Political Economy and Access to Justice Judicial Education Seminar (PEAJJES) in 2022 to provide judges an academic framework for examining and formulating best practices for strengthening America’s justice system, as informed by law, theory, and lived experiences.