Samiha Rahman

Samiha Rahman, Ph.D.Samiha Rahman

  • Assistant Professor of Human Development
  • Email: Samiha.Rahman@csulb.edu
  • Phone: (562) 985-8267
  • Office location: FO2-213
  • Office hours for Spring 2024: Dr. Rahman is on research leave for Spring 2024.

Education

  • Ph.D. (2020), M.A. (2016) University of Pennsylvania, Africana Studies & Education (joint degree)
  • B.A. (2012) Columbia University, History, Ethnicity & Race Studies

Research Interests

Dr. Samiha Rahman is an Assistant Professor of Human Development at California State University Long Beach. She holds a Ph.D. in Africana Studies and Education from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was named a Fulbright-Hays Fellow and a National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellow. Dr. Rahman’s scholarship examines how youth of color in the U.S. and on the African continent understand their identities, grapple with inequalities in their lives, and engage in activism to transform their communities. Dr. Rahman’s approaches to research and teaching are shaped by her expertise in the fields of Africana Studies, youth studies, anthropology of education, and critical race studies. Throughout her courses, Dr. Rahman emphasizes the core idea that young people’s experiences and perspectives are fundamentally shaped by their social location (e.g. race, class, gender, nationality, religion).

Dr. Rahman is currently working on her first book project entitled Black Muslim Freedom Dreams: Islamic Education, Transnational Migration, and Diasporic Exchange. This project focuses on a group of African American Muslim youth aged 12 to 29 who have withdrawn from schools in the U.S. and migrated to Medina Baye, Senegal for an educational experience that they anticipate will be more affirming than what is available to them in the U.S. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Medina Baye, as well as in New York City, Detroit, Atlanta, and Washington D.C., the project analyzes how these youths’ experiences abroad shape their aspirations and provide them new ways of envisioning what it means to learn at the intersection of being young, Black, and Muslim.

Teaching

  • HDEV 327: Approaches to Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood 
  • HDEV 403: The Acquisition of Cultural Socialization in Cross-cultural Perspectives

Recent Publications

  • Rahman, S. (in press). Black Muslim Brilliance: Countering Antiblackness and Islamophobia through Transnational Educational Migration. Curriculum Inquiry.
  • Gadsden, V. L., Rahman, S., & Johnson, W. F. (2019). Civic Knowledge, Engagement, and Participation: Narratives of Youth of Color in Urban Schools. Peabody Journal of Education, 94(1), 78-96.