10th anniversary of JAS now available

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The 10th anniversary of the Journal of Arabian Studies:  issue 10.1 (June 2020) is available at https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjab20/10/1?nav=tocList.

It includes a comprehensive survey of the emergence and institutional development of the field of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies, which the authors (JAS’s editors) believe to be the first of its kind. It also briefly sketches the story of JAS as part of this development:

James Onley & Gerd Nonneman, “The Journal of Arabian Studies and the Development of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies”, JAS, 10.1 (June 2020), pp. 1-50.

Routledge have agreed to make this article free to access in perpetuity, at https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/IQFXFS5CHUNWDGZGYRNP/full?target=10.1080/21534764.2020.1847245, so feel free to circulate.

ABSTRACT

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Journal of Arabian Studies (JAS), this article offers the first history of the field of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies (GAPS), including the origins and evolution of JAS. It begins with an overview of the origins and evolution of GAPS as a field of scholarship, then provides a detailed survey of the field’s institutional development, which can be traced back to the region’s post-war oil wealth and the large oil-funded archaeological expeditions of the 1950s–60s. This is reflected in GAPS’s first societies, centres, and journals, which catered exclusively to archaeologists, historians, and Arabists. The transformation of GAPS into a global interdisciplinary field (encompassing both humanities and social sciences) began in 1969, although it remained a fringe field within Middle East Studies. The expansion of GAPS into a mainstream field in its own right began in the 2000s, reaching critical mass in the 2010s, resulting in the establishment of the Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies (AGAPS) and the launch of JAS. In the past decade, GAPS also expanded beyond Middle East Studies to embrace Indian Ocean Studies. The article concludes with an overview of JAS’s first decade: 2011–20.