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, 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 work also appears in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Journal of Global History, Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, and other journals and edited collections. She is 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.

Fahrenthold is now completing Unmentionables, a new book on Syrian textile workers in the Arab Atlantic world (under contract). Considering how Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian immigrants worked, struck, and won in the textile and garment industries before 1934, the work pursues histories of class formation, labor contestation, and capitalist domination across the Arab American mahjar. She is also co-PI (with Nicole Ranganath) of Refugee California, a 2023-24 Davis Humanities Institute Research Cluster devoted to narrating post-displacement histories of Middle Eastern and South Asian asylum seekers in the Golden State.

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

Research Focus

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

Publications

Book:

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 Arab American Book Award, Evelyn Shakir 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); Twentieth Century Partitions (HIS 114); History of the Modern Middle East, 1750-1914 (193A); History of the Modern Middle East, 1914-present (HIS 193B); Proseminar on Migration in/from 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 Institute Research Cluster Grant (for Refugee California), 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, 2019
• Khayrallah Prize in Migration Studies, 2019
• Syrian Studies Association Book Prize, 2019
• Syrian Studies Association Dissertation Prize, 2016
• American Council of Learned Societies/Andrew Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship, 2013-2014