CGMS | Book Launch: "Unmentionables: Textiles, Garment Work, and the Syrian American Working Class | Stacy Fahrenthold
CGMS | Book Launch: "Unmentionables: Textiles, Garment Work, and the Syrian American Working Class | Stacy Fahrenthold
Histories of Arab America often begin with the Syrian merchant peddler, a historical 'main character' whose commercial prowess seems to explain the immigrant community's upward economic mobility through the twentieth century. In this talk, Stacy Fahrenthold explores the consequences of assuming the Syrian mahjar (diaspora) lacks an industrial past. Pursuing the stories of textile workers as they organized across the Arab Atlantic, Fahrenthold introduces us to alternative narrators: union activists who led street demonstrations, women who shut down kimono factories, child laborers who threw snowballs at police, and the merchant capitalists who contended with all of them.
Stacy D. Fahrenthold is Associate Professor of History at the University of California Davis. Her research focuses on Middle Eastern migration, transnational social movements, and the endurance of ties between the Arab American mahjar (diaspora) and modern Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. At UC Davis, she offers courses in global migration, diasporas, and refugee histories.