Introducing Nafina Raha, the 2025 College of Humanities Dean’s Scholar
“Throughout my time at CSUN, I have strived for excellence both within and beyond the classroom,” says 2025 Humanities Dean’ Scholar Nafina Raha. “Driven primarily by my love for learning and my hope to carry on the power of transformative education to future generations as an educator.” That passion to acquire and share knowledge, kept Raha at the top of the Dean’s list in the College of Humanities with an unwavering 4.0 GPA. It also inspired her to double major in Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies, in addition to minoring in Creative Writing.
During her time at CSUN, Raha was involved in undergraduate research both in and outside of the classroom, including field research to complete her GWS capstone project, “Women of Color’s Friendships as Sites of Liberatory Knowledge Production.” She presented her capstone project at the 20th Annual GWS undergraduate Student Conference in May 2024 and was subsequently honored by the Institute of Feminist Studies and Social Action (IFSSA) with the Best Gender and Women’s Studies Senior Research Paper Award. She was also awarded the Lee Yong Soo “Comfort Women” and Human Rights Fellowship in January 2024, which funded her research entitled “Fiction as Counter-Memory and Resistance: Submerged Histories of Gender-Based Violence and Generational Haunting in the Korean- and Armenian-American Diasporas.” She went on to present her work at various conferences, including the 28th Annual CSUNposium, the National Conference of Undergraduate Research (NCUR), and the 2024 “Comfort Women” for Action and Redress Showcase.
Raha also worked to support the success of other students as a Supplemental Instructor (SI) for freshman writing courses, eventually serving as an Assistant Coordinator in that program. In that capacity, she was proud to not only help students improve their writing skills, but also to help reaffirm their worth and intelligence as learners. “That position allowed me to both hone my skills as an aspiring educator and carry what I learned in my GWS and AAS courses into my SI classrooms,” Raha says.
Serving as the president of CSUN’s Feminist Student Association (FSA) since July 2023, Raha heled reenergize the intersectional, transnational feminist organization in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. The group’s work focuses on community-based education and emphasizes the importance of carrying the epistemology of GWS and ES beyond the classroom and into everyday life. Raha says, “I and my peers have successfully transformed FSA into an organization that works across movements and ideologies to champion self-determination, equity, and justice for historically marginalized groups.”
Among CSUN’s faculty, Raha had an impressive number of champions and mentors. In the words of one of them, “Nafina is in the top 1% of the best students I have ever had in all my years of teaching. I am simply in awe of her.” Her future is undeniably bright, and the College of Humanities is exceedingly proud that Nafina Raha will forever shine among its pantheon of esteemed alumni.