Congratulations to Professor Stacy Fahrenthold, the 2025 winner of the Nikki Keddie Book Award! Given by the Middle East Studies Association of North America, the award recognizes outstanding scholarly work in the area of religion, revolution, and/or society in the Middle East.

Her book, “Unmentionables: Textiles, Garment Work, and the Syrian American Working Class” was published by Stanford University Press. The MESA award committee said “’Unmentionable’ in polite conversation were the undergarments produced in Syrian-American factories in the early twentieth century, but also the women and children who worked the sewing machines. Beautifully written, Stacy Fahrenthold’s book presents how they fought for their precarious labor rights and negotiated the relationship with their equally Syrian-American bosses who ran businesses on a transatlantic trade. She weaves together economic, social, cultural, and gender history on a single thread, assigning a great deal of agency to Syrian immigrants, laying out their material culture and entrepreneurial acumen, and how they moved in deeply interconnected works of labor activism and global trade.”

You can read more about Dr. Fahrenthold's MESA Book Award here: https://mesana.org/awards/awardee/mesa-book-awards/stacy-d.-fahrenthold

Find the book here: https://www.sup.org/books/history/unmentionables