Speculative Futures through Tourism: Infrastructures of Movement, Hope, and Nation-building in the GCC
This project emerges from my interest in tourism & mobility in the Middle East and focuses on the massive buildup of "tourism" industries across the GCC (specifically Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the Emirates). This research explores how "culture,” "heritage," and history become imagined through tourism - and then realized as state-making, myth-making, and through acts of envisioning the future in infrastructures. This project is deeply interested in the hotel/hospitality industry across the Gulf, as well as visual culture from media & national agencies from the 1960's-1980's. The project is ongoing - but largely informed by living in Doha, Qatar during Spring academic semesters 2014 & 2015.