Dark tourism

Interesting conversations have been taking place on the dark tourism research forum, such as whether slum tourism can be considered to be dark tourism, the motivation for dark tourism, topics used for research on dark tourism, the prevalence of the London Dungeons and Auschwitz as focuses for study and ideas for dark tourism in Paris.

A Discussion Paper Tourism to Places with a Difficult Past discusses recent research trends and concepts in heritage Tourism, dissonant heritage tourism, thanatourism, dark tourism and holocaust tourism. There is a call for papers for the Death, Commemoration and Memory conference which will take place on 24-25 June at University of Edinburgh and a Titanic Memorial Cruise is planned for 8 April 2012.

The Sage Handbook of Tourism Studies by T. Jamal (available in Quick Ref at 911 JAM), includes a chapter by T. Seaton entitled "Thanatourism and Its Discontents".

An archive of The War Tourist newsletter is available here. It concerns itself with recounts of places visited by a war tourist, focussing on the great fortifications of the two World Wars and provides practical information for those who may be interested in visiting the places themselves.

An article in the Guardian discusses the experience of a group of young people in Auschwitz. Another article follows pupils travelling to Auschwitz as part of their study, here.