Category Archives: Uncategorized

July 9 2020: this week I’m posting threads on the Syrian and Lebanese mahjar over at the historical twitter account: @Tweetistorian. Created by Khodadad Rezakhan and Torsten Wollina in 2019, the Tweetistorian is a roving account that a new historian takes over every Monday. In order to keep track of this week’s threads on the mahjar, I’ll post each thread link below:

Origin Stories: on the difficulties of doing migration history through traditional archives, and some of the traps of the sedentary bias:  https://twitter.com/Tweetistorian/status/1280175832737038348

Quantifying the Mahjar: the basics in Syrian emigration to the Americas, plus a discussion of the politics of quantifying the Syrian diaspora over the last 100 years:  https://twitter.com/Tweetistorian/status/1280190639104090112

Mahjari Print Culture: on the Arabic periodicals of the Americas, starting in the late 19th century, and on the politics of the Syrian Americans press before the First World War: https://twitter.com/Tweetistorian/status/1280533364223512577

World War I in the Mahjar: this one is on the politics of the First World War, with a focus on Syrian diasporic resistance to the Ottoman Empire:  https://twitter.com/Tweetistorian/status/1280903978226614272

Military Mobilization in the Mahjar: on the recruitment of Arab Americans into the French and US armies, and links with nationalist politics: https://twitter.com/Tweetistorian/status/1280924303685369857

Mandating the Mahjar: on the fall of the Ottomans, the rise of the European Mandates, and the role Syrian and Lebanese abroad played in Mandate politics. Also, diaspora anticolonialism: https://twitter.com/Tweetistorian/status/1281290299776528384

Work and Livelihoods in the Mahjar: on the diaspora’s labor economies and the kinds of work Syrians did upon arriving abroad. Also, some discussion about the politics of mutual aid and immigrant welfare orgs: https://twitter.com/Tweetistorian/status/1281615926949892097

April 12 2020: this Spring I teamed up with co-editors Dawn Chatty and Annika Rabo to establish a brand new interdisciplinary book series on migration and refugees in the modern Middle East, and I hope you will consider us for your projects of share the series with colleagues, friends, and students. Here’s a shareable one-sheet about the series; if I can answer any questions please email!

New Book Series: Refugees and Migrants within the Middle East Series

Series Editors: Dawn Chatty (Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford); Stacy D. Fahrenthold (University of California Davis); Annika Rabo (University of Stockholm)

Description: This series explores new research on refugees and migrants within the Middle East and North Africa, drawing largely from Anthropology, History, Geography, Sociology, and Political Science. Refugees and Migrants within the Middle East seeks to present some of the most innovative work on displacement and mobility coming out of Middle Eastern studies.  It targets work on the legacies of migration on the region, the agency and humanity of refugees, and their resistance to silencing. Both migrants and refugees navigate the fraught spaces between legal regimes, operating in liminal spaces as ‘guests’ or exiles in contexts of statelessness, and securitization of borders. This series aims to reclaim their agency through examinations of, among other topics, livelihoods; advocacy; cultural production; social movements; and resilience and resistance. Together, the titles in this series will offer vital understanding of the complex role that mobility plays in the Middle East and North Africa.

Submission information: we are seeking several proposals and anticipate launching this book series with 3-4 concurrent titles that reflect the field’s theoretical, methodological, and disciplinary diversity. Proposals can be sent to Stacy Fahrenthold at sfahrenthold@ucdavis.edu. Proposal information can be viewed at this link: https://aucpress.com/auc-press-guidelines-for-submitting-a-book-proposal/