Stacy D. Fahrenthold

Stacy Fahrenthold Portrait

Position Title
Associate Professor

SSH 4205
Office Hours
Winter 2024: Friday 1-3pm (graduate students). Please make an appointment at link above.
Bio

Education

  • Ph.D. History, Northeastern University
  • M.A. History, Northeastern University
  • B.A. History, Georgia State University

About

Stacy Fahrenthold is a historian of the modern Middle East specializing in labor migration; displacement/refugees; border studies; and diasporas within and from the region. Her award winning first book, Between the Ottomans and the Entente: The First World War in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora (Oxford University Press, 2019) explores the war work of Arab emigres living in Brazil, Argentina, and the United States, revealing the repercussions of their activism on the post-Ottoman Middle East. Her new book, Unmentionables: Textiles, Garment Work, and the Syrian American Working Class (Stanford University Press, forthcoming 2024) examines how Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian immigrant workers navigated processes of racialization, immigration restriction, and labor contestation in the textile industries of the Atlantic world. She is also Associate Editor of the leading open access journal Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Migration Studies, and a series editor of Refugees and Migrants within the Middle East with the American University of Cairo Press.

In addition to the Department of History, Fahrenthold is affiliated with the Middle East/South Asia Studies Program, the Global Migration Center, and the Human Rights Studies Program. Before coming to UC Davis in 2018, she taught at Stanislaus State University, Fresno State University, and Williams College. 

Research Focus

Migration, displacement, and diaspora in the Middle East; Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine; the Ottoman eastern Mediterranean; Arab American studies; labor and working-class histories; ethnic and religious minorities; refugees.

Publications

Books:

Unmentionables: Textiles, Garment Work, and the Syrian American Working Class. Stanford University Press, 2024 (forthcoming).

Between the Ottomans and the Entente: The First World War in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora, 1908-1925Oxford University Press, 2019. Paperback 2021. **Winner of the Arab American National Museum's Evelyn Shakir Book Award for Non-Fiction; the Khayrallah Prize in Migration Studies; and the Syrian Studies Association Outstanding Book Award. Honorable mention for the Lebanese Studies Association Book Prize.

Articles and Book Chapters:

  • “Return Migration and Repatriation: Myths and Realities in the Interwar Syrian Mahjar.” Routledge Handbook on Middle Eastern Diasporas, edited by Dalia Abdelhady and Ramy Aly, 301-315. London: Routledge, 2022.
  • "Ladies Aid as Labor History: Working Class Formation in the Mahjar." Journal of Middle East Women's Studies 17, no. 3 (2021): 326-347.
  • “‘Claimed by Turkey as Subjects’: Ottoman Migrants, Foreign Passports, and Syrian Nationality in the Americas, 1915-1925." The Subjects of Ottoman International Law, edited by Lâle Can and Michael Christopher Low et al., 216-237. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2020.
  • “Arab Labor Migration in the Americas, 1880–1930.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. Oxford University Press, 2019. 
  • “An Archaeology of Rare Books in Arab Atlantic History.” Journal of American Ethnic History 37, no. 3 (2018): 77-83.
  • “Former Ottomans in the Ranks: Pro-Entente Military Recruitment Among Syrians in the Americas, 1916–1918.” Journal of Global History 11, no. 1 (2016): 88-112.
  • “Sound Minds in Sound Bodies: Transnational Philanthropy and Patriotic Masculinity in al-Nadi al-Homsi and Syrian Brazil, 1920–1932.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 46, no. 2 (2014): 259-283.
  • “Transnational Modes and Media: the Syrian Press in the Mahjar and Emigrant Activism during World War I.” Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East Migration Studies 1, no. 1 (2013): 32-57.

Teaching

  • Undergraduate: Introduction to Global Migration (HIS 019); History of Modern Palestine/Israel (HIS 113); Histories of 20th Century Partition (HIS 114); History of the Modern Middle East, 1750-1914 (193A); History of the Modern Middle East, 1914-present (HIS 193B); Proseminar on Migration and the Modern Middle East (HIS 102R); Proseminar on Bans and Border Walls (HIS 102X); Proseminar on Forced Migration in the Middle East/South Asia (MSA 180)
  • Graduate: Diaspora in Middle Eastern, African, and South Asian Histories (HIS 201W); Global Migration History (HIS 201W); Second-Year Research Seminar (HIS 203)

Awards

  • UC Davis Humanities and Social Sciences Stimulating Exceptional and Essential Discovery (SEED) Grant, 2024-25
  • UC Davis Humanities Institute Research Cluster Grant, 2023-24
  • National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 2021-2022
  • UC Davis Humanities Institute Faculty Research Fellowship, 2021
  • Arab American Book Award, Evelyn Shakir Award for Non-Fiction, 2020
  • Khayrallah Prize in Migration Studies, 2019
  • Syrian Studies Association Book Prize, 2019
  • Honorable Mention, Lebanese Studies Association Book Prize, 2019
  • Syrian Studies Association Dissertation Prize, 2016
  • American Council of Learned Societies/Andrew Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship, 2013-2014

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