Historian, traveler, writer

Hi, I’m Stacy

I was born in New York City and raised in the suburbs of Connecticut.  I grew up wanting to see new places and understand what life is like beyond the Tri-state Area.

I became a historian of the Middle East and North Africa.

I research and write about everyday life in the Arab world.  I want to make this multi-layered and often misunderstood region comprehensible to my friends, students and colleagues.

I am now writing a book about Edith Wharton’s trip to Morocco in 1917. Wharton’s private papers and published works provide unexpected insights into how literature shaped political attitudes in the United States. Wharton endorsed French colonialism in her travelogue In Morocco (1920). In doing so, she invited American readers to accept an idea that has since become entrenched in American foreign policy: Western intervention betters the lives of Arab peoples.