History Department

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. At UC Davis, she is a 2024-27 College of Letters & Sciences Dean's Faculty Fellow. She also chairs the UC Davis Graduate Program in History, and is Affiliate Faculty with the Middle East and South Asian Studies Program.

Fahrenthold's work examines social movements in Middle Eastern diasporas across the Americas. Her first book, Between the Ottomans and the Entente: The First World War in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora, received the Arab American National Museum's 2020 Evelyn Shakir Award, the 2019 Khayrallah Prize in Migration Studies, the 2019 Syrian Studies Association's Book Award, and received Honorable Mention by the Lebanese Studies Association in 2020. Her new book, Unmentionables: Textiles, Garment Work, and the Syrian American Working Class, 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.

Fahrenthold 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.

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, Worlding the Middle East series, 2024.

Between the Ottomans and the Entente: The First World War in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora, 1908-1925. Oxford 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 and Advising

Fahrenthold advises graduate students in modern Middle East history, modern migration/diasporas, refugees/displacement, and Arab American history. Prospective graduate students are encouraged to reach out via email.

Undergraduate Teaching: 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); Forced Migration in the Middle East/South Asia (MSA 180)

Graduate Teaching: First-Year Research Seminar (HIS 200); Second-Year Research Seminar (HIS 203); Diaspora in Middle Eastern, African, and South Asian Histories (HIS 201W); Global Migration History (HIS 201W)

Awards

• UC Davis College of Letters & Sciences Dean's Faculty Fellowship, 2024-27
• UC Davis Humanities and Social Sciences Stimulating Exceptional and Essential Discovery (SEED) Grant, 2024-25
• University of California Office of the President (UCOP), "The Middle East in Context," (in partnership with the Department of History, Middle East/South Asia Studies Program, and California History Social Science Project), 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, 2020
• American Council of Learned Societies/Andrew Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship, 2013-2014