W&M ScholarWorks Undergraduate Honors Theses Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 6-2013 Think Place: Geographies of National Identity in Oman Gretchen Nutz College of William and Mary Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses Part of the Near and Middle Eastern Studies Commons Recommended Citation Nutz, Gretchen, "Think Place: Geographies of National Identity in Oman" (2013). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 588. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/588 This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Undergraduate Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. THINK PLACE: GEOGRAPHIES OF NATIONAL IDENTITY IN OMAN A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies from the College of William and Mary in Virginia, by Gretchen Nutz Accepted for _______________________________ (Honors, High Honors, Highest Honors) _______________________________ Director ________________________________ ________________________________ Williamsburg, Virginia May 2013 Acknowledgements & Preface In the summer of 2012, I arrived in Muscat, Oman with funding from several university grants to study national narratives and how they are communicated to tourists in preparation for writing a senior honors thesis. I began by studying my surroundings and conversing with my Arabic instructors and my host family, one of many Omani families that had returned from living in East Africa within the last few decades. Through some connections from my home university, I also began meeting with government officials involved in tourism and heritage along with various people who had commercial or scholarly interest in heritage tourism in Oman.