Stacy Fahrenthold, Ph.D.

Stacy Fahrenthold, Ph.D.

Woman with shoulder-length brown hair, black top, neutral expression, stained-glass window, photo

Professor

  • History
Office Hours
Fall 2026: Fridays 2-4pm by appointment only (please email)
Education
  • Ph.D. History, Northeastern University
  • M.A. History, Northeastern University
  • B.A. History, Georgia State University
About
Stacy Fahrenthold is Professor in the Department of History and the Middle East/South Asia Studies Program and a faculty affiliate of the Cultural Studies Graduate Group. She is a historian of the modern Middle East specializing in labor migration, displacement, refugees, and diasporas within and from the region. Fahrenthold currently co-leads (with Rana Jaleel) a Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, "Academic Freedom from Below: Rethinking the Social Role of the University and the Meaning of Shared Governance" (2026–27), and she recently completed a high curriculum project "The Middle East in Historical Context," with the California History-Social Science Project. Her research in Middle Eastern diasporas has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Mellon Foundation. She is also an Associate Reviews Editor with the American Historical Review.
Research Focus
Professor Fahrenthold's research examines social movements, labor activism, and diaspora political mobilization among Middle Eastern migrants in the Americas. She is the author of two award-winning monographs. Her new book,  Unmentionables: Textiles, Garment Work, and the Syrian American Working Class, examines how Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian workers navigated processes of racialization, immigration restriction, and labor contestation in the textile industries of the Atlantic world, and was awarded the Middle East Studies Association's 2025 Nikki Keddie Book Award and the 2026 David Montgomery Book Award from the Organization of American Historians and the Labor and Working-Class History Association. Her first book, Between the Ottomans and the Entente: The First World War in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora (2019), received the Arab American National Museum's Evelyn Shakir Book Award, the Khayrallah Prize in Migration Studies, and the Syrian Studies Association Book Prize. Fahrenthold is currently working on a new book on Middle Eastern refugee resettlement in the United States.
Select 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.
Articles
  • “Coda: Do They Strike There? Class and the Counterarchive in the Syrian Mahjar.” In “Atlantic Crossings,” eds. Agnes Gehbald, Philipp Horne, and Rea Vogt, Comparativ 35, no. 1/2 (2025): 146-150.
  • “Return Migration and Repatriation: Myths and Realities in the Interwar Syrian Mahjar.” Routledge Handbook on Middle Eastern Diasporas, eds. Dalia Abdelhady and Ramy Aly, 301-315. 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.” In The Subjects of Ottoman International Law, eds. Lâle Can, Michael Christopher Low, Kent F. Schull, and Robert Zens, 216-237. University of Indiana Press, 2020.
  • “Arab Labor Migration in the Americas, 1880-1930.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. Oxford University Press, 2019.
  • “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 offers introductory surveys in Middle East history and Global Migration, and upper division courses on the modern Middle East, Middle East-South Asia connections, and global migration, refugees, partition, and borderlands. Her undergraduate courses include Modern Palestine/Israel (HIS 113), Histories of 20th Century Partition (HIS 114); The Modern Middle East, 1750-1914 (193A); The Modern Middle East, 1914-present (HIS 193B); and Topics in Middle East/South Asia Studies (MSA 180). She offers graduate seminars in modern Middle East history, Arab and Arab American studies, and diasporas in Middle East, South Asian, and African histories.
Select Awards
  • Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, “Academic Freedom from Below: Rethinking the Social Role of the University and the Meaning of Shared Governance," 2026-27
  • David Montgomery Award, Organization of American Historians and Labor and Working-Class Association, 2026
  • Nikki Keddie Book Award, Middle East Studies Association, 2025
  • 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, "The Middle East in Historical Context," (in partnership with the California History Social Science Project), 2024-25
  • UC Davis Humanities Institute Research Cluster Grant, 2023-24
  • National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 2021-22
  • 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
  • American Council of Learned Societies/Andrew Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship, 2013-2014