Research on urban spaces in the Gulf region has increased substantially over the last two decades, particularly with a strong focus on contemporary phenomena. However, this focus often overlooks entangled histories and past trajectories that are formative for the present. Moreover, it perpetuates the notion of the region’s ahistoricity. To challenge the Gulf cities’ presumed lack of history, we have used a media-historical approach engaging with the history of a medium (e.g., architecture, film, magazine, photography, social media) in relation to a specific city. The article first provides an overview of recent research on the Gulf’s urban cultures in various disciplines. After introducing our approach, the article then considers temporality and spatiality as research perspectives in media studies and subsequently shifts to established media-historical approaches within Middle Eastern and South Asian area studies. It evaluates the complexities of writing on the art and architectural histories of the Gulf as specific forms of media. Finally, it addresses the potential of transdisciplinarity and collaboration as methods resituating the Gulf within the Arab region, the Persianate world and the Indian Ocean, respectively.

中文翻译：

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没有历史就没有空间

在过去二十年中，对海湾地区城市空间的研究大幅增加，特别是对当代现象的高度关注。然而，这种关注往往会忽视对现在形成影响的错综复杂的历史和过去的轨迹。此外，它延续了该地区非历史性的概念。为了挑战海湾城市缺乏历史的假设，我们使用了一种媒体历史方法来研究与特定城市相关的媒体（例如，建筑、电影、杂志、摄影、社交媒体）的历史。本文首先概述了各个学科对海湾城市文化的最新研究。在介绍了我们的方法之后，然后，文章将时间性和空间性视为媒体研究的研究视角，随后转向中东和南亚地区研究中既定的媒体历史方法。它评估了作为特定媒体形式撰写海湾艺术和建筑历史的复杂性。最后，它探讨了跨学科和合作的潜力，作为将海湾分别重新定位在阿拉伯地区、波斯世界和印度洋之内的方法。