Kahf graduated from Douglass College in 1988[7] and later received her Ph.D. in comparative literature from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey in 1994. In 1995 she became a professor at the University of Arkansas[8] where she serves in the Program for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies,[9] and is a faculty member in the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.