A historian of the modern Middle East specializing in labor migration; displacement/refugees; borderlands and diasporas within and from the region, Stacy Fahrenthold is Professor of History and Middle East/South Asia Studies at the University of California, Davis. She is also Associate Editor of Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Migration Studies.
Fahrenthold’s 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. It was recently awarded the 2025 Nikki Keddie Prize by the Middle East Studies Association, and the 2026 David Montgomery Award by the Organization of American Historians and the Labor and Working-Class History Association. Her award-winning first book, Between the Ottomans and the Entente: The First World War in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora 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.