2024-05-05T23:49:20-04:00 https://archinect.com/news/article/117905496/archinect-s-lexicon-dark-tourism Amelia Taylor-Hochberg 2015-01-09T10:21:00-05:00 >2018-01-30T06:16:04-05:00 <img src="https://archinect.gumlet.io/uploads/7j/7j135hirixupby39.jpg?fit=crop&auto=compress%2Cformat&enlarge=true&w=1200" border="0" /><p><strong>dark tourism</strong>, noun: "tourism involving travel to sites historically associated with death and tragedy" (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_tourism" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>).</p><p>The term was coined in a 1996 report published in the <em>International Journal of Heritage Studies</em>, entitled &ldquo;<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13527259608722175#preview" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">JFK and Dark Tourism: a fascination with assassination</a>&rdquo;. As authors Malcolm Foley and J. John Lennon suggest in the title, the term was born out of an investigation of sites related to John F. Kennedy&rsquo;s life and death, that had been turned into tourist &ldquo;destinations&rdquo;. Foley and Lennon were interested in the legitimacy and ethics of how these sites were presented, both by the tourism bodies and the media.</p><p>Foley and Lennon explain dark tourism as: &ldquo;positioned at the cross-roads of the recent history of inhuman acts and the representation of these in news and film media. Interpretations of such events and their commercial development or exploitation are central to consideration of this area.&rdquo;</p><p>But the business of touring places associated with death or tragedy is nothing...</p>