Stacy Fahrenthold, Ph.D.

Stacy Fahrenthold, Ph.D.

Black and white portrait of a woman with glasses and a plaid shirt, looking directly at the camera.

Professor

  • History

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 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. It recently received the Middle East Studies Association's 2025 Nikki Keddie Award for "outstanding scholarly work in religion, revolution, and/or society." Her award-winning first book, Between the Ottomans and the Entente: The First World War in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora, examines the politics of Syrian and Lebanese migration to the Americas during the First World War.

At UC Davis, Fahrenthold is jointly appointed with the Middle East/South Asia Studies Program. She recently served as Principal Investigator for "The Middle East in Historical Context" and is currently starting up a new Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar called, "Academic Freedom from Below." She is also Associate Editor of Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Migration Studies.

Research Focus

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

Education
  • Ph.D. History, Northeastern University
  • M.A. History, Northeastern University
  • B.A. History, Georgia State University
Publications
Books:
  • Unmentionables: Textiles, Garment Work, and the Syrian American Working Class. Stanford University Press, Worlding the Middle East series, 2024. **Awarded the Middle East Studies Association's 2025 Nikki Keddie Award.
  • Between the Ottomans and the Entente: The First World War in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora, 1908-1925. Oxford University Press, 2019. **Awarded 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 Chapters:
  • “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.
  • Stacy Fahrenthold and Akram Khater, “From Forgotten Shores to a Port of Call: Ten Years at Mashriq & Mahjar.” Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Migration Studies 10, no. 1 (2023): 1–8.
  • “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. 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. 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.
Awards
  • Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, “Academic Freedom from Below: Rethinking the Social Role of the University and the Meaning of Shared Governance," 2025-28
  • 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
  • Honorable Mention, Lebanese Studies Association Book Prize, 2020
  • American Council of Learned Societies/Andrew Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship, 2013-2014