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This paper aims to review developments in dark tourism research over a 20-year period from its inception in 1996. This paper also considers the reasons why people visit dark tourism sites and the different perspectives of site operators, tourists and academics.

This paper uses a round table discussion with three participants – all researchers who played a significant role in developing the early concept of dark tourism. The paper also explores a number of questions about past, current and future research interests and developments.

It was observed that dark tourism site operators and visitors tend to view the act of remembrance as a significant reason for visiting a site associated with past atrocities. This perspective is rather different from the original concept of dark tourism – viewed by many as a form of pilgrimage tourism.

The review reveals a gap between aspects of the literature on dark tourism and the reasons why these sites remain popular with tourists. Site operators and visitors say that motives for visiting are more commonly associated with an act of remembrance and a sense of pilgrimage than a desire to view a site associated with pain and death.

This viewpoint provides a 20-year perspective on research in dark tourism based on a conversation between three of the most eminent researchers in the field.

In 1867, the author Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, undertook a great pleasure excursion across Europe. Visiting a range of sites, from those associated with the Christian Cult of Death to the notable cultural heritage attractions of the time, Twain published his experiences in what would later become one of the world's best‐selling travelogues; The Innocents Abroad, or the New Pilgrim's Progress. This essay offers a rereading of Twain's encounters, proposing examination of Twain's encounters as timely and useful in addressing what Seaton identifies as a gap in data on thanatourism consumption.

The essay draws on contemporary thanatourism theoretical frameworks, including Seaton's “Continuum of intensity” and “Thanatourism developmental sketch”; Sharpley's “Matrix of dark tourism supply and demand” and Stone and Sharpley's “Dark tourism consumption framework”, among others, to explore Twain's encounters.

Supplemented by a review of recent theoretical thanatourism research, the essay proposes three findings. Finding one illustrates that Twain's encounters, although not always pre‐motivated or purposefully supplied, were emotionally charged and deeply affective experiences, which had the potential to provoke ontological insecurity. Finding two highlights the potential of the geography of death to stimulate emotional reactions and configure individual and societal interactions with death. Finding three argues a need for new methodological approaches to understanding the thanatourism experience; approaches that are empathetically sensitive to the potentially powerful impact of the thanatourism experience.

The essay draws on a classic travelogue to help address the imbalance in knowledge of the thanatourism experience. The essay argues that thanatourism is a layered and complex phenomenon, highly personal and often a potentially powerful and emotionally affective experience.

Over the years, dark tourism as a theory has become very heterogenous. It has come to mean a lot of different things, according to the vantage points chosen for analysis. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the research that has been conducted on the topic of dark tourism including what the accepted definitions are, where it originated from, subcategories of the topic, and tourist motivations for visiting such sites. A discussion regarding the role of cultural differences in perceiving the phenomenon of dark tourism is also included. Dark tourist experience is qualitatively different from that of the leisure tourists, and the theories and frameworks available in the extant tourism literature to understand leisure tourism are insufficient to capture its essence. This means, more foundational conceptualisations and radical theory building are called for – rather than incrementally tweaking the existing ones.

Commonly referred to as dark tourism or thanatourism, the act of touristic travel to sites of or sites associated with death and disaster has gained significant attention with media imaginations and academic scholarship. However, despite a growing body of literature on the representation and tourist experience of deathscapes within the visitor economy, dark tourism as a field of study is still very much in its infancy. Moreover, questions remain of the academic origins of the dark tourism concept, as well as its contribution to the broader social scientific study of tourism and death education. Thus, the purpose of this invited review for this Special Issue on dark tourism, is to offer some critical insights into thanatourism scholarship.

This review paper critiques the emergence and current direction of dark tourism scholarship.

The author suggests that dark tourism as an academic field of study is where death education and tourism studies collide and, as such, can offer potentially fruitful research avenues within the broad realms of thanatology. Secondly, the author outlines how dark tourism as a conceptual typology has been subject to a sustained marketization process within academia over the past decade or so. Consequently, dark tourism is now a research brand in which scholars can locate a diverse range of death‐related and tourist experience studies. Finally, the author argues that the study of dark tourism is not simply a fascination with death or the macabre, but a multi‐disciplinary academic lens through which to scrutinise fundamental interrelationships of the contemporary commodification of death with the cultural condition of society.

This review paper scrutinises dark tourism scholarship and, subsequently, offers original insights into the potential role dark tourism may play in the public representation of death, as well as highlighting broader interrelationships dark tourism has with research into the social reality of death and the significant Other dead.

Trace Instruments have announced that Mr Tony Battaglia has been named central regional sales manager.

Teaching about matters of ethnicity, race, and culture in the social studies is controversial in nature, but necessary to ensuring students are leaving the classroom with some multicultural competence. In social studies , discussion of race and racism is typically confined to the master narrative, which is limited to content pertaining to slavery, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights Movement. What is missed in the discussion about racism in the social studies is the conversation about intraracial racism or discrimination, which may not be a mainstream topic, but a persistent and ever-present issue within Black communities. The purpose of this article is to provide teachers with activities that can elicit discussion about Black intraracial discrimination, a harmful legacy of slavery and colonization. By using various pedagogical tools for discussion of intraracial discrimination, teachers will be incorporating a controversial, but culturally relevant, topic into the curriculum as well as ensuring that students become aware of matters of culture and race that exist beyond the textbook.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the Australian tourist experience at Gallipoli in order to better understand how tourists approach and engage with battlefield sites and how the experience may transform them. Specific attention is paid to the role of interpretation in shaping these experiences.

A qualitative research method was employed, involving in‐depth interviews with Australians who had visited Gallipoli in a range of circumstances.

Australians visit Gallipoli for a variety of reasons, including national sentiment and personal connections. They engage with the site in a range of highly personal ways, with guides playing a crucial role in helping them to connect with the site physically, intellectually and emotionally.

The study relied on the participants recalling their experiences from some years past, although other research suggests that this is a minimal problem in the context of such memorable and moving experiences.

The paper provides valuable insights into how tourists experience battlefield sites of great national significance, and consequently how such sites should be managed sensitively and unobtrusively.

This research provides empirical support to conceptual studies on how tourists engage with battlefield tourism sites, and specifically explores the role of interpretation in shaping the overall experience. It further considers the ongoing effects of such experiences.

Elsewhere in this issue we review the First (Interim) Report of the Joint Survey of Pesticide Residues in Foodstuffs, published by the Association of Public Analysts (Editor: Mr. D. G. Forbes, B.Sc., F.R.I.C.). The Scheme, planned with meticulous care and executed with the best spirit of co‐operation, sets a pattern for this type of investigation; there are other problems which could be studied in the same manner. Such a response from the bodies representing the major local authorities of the country and their food and drugs administrations—inspectors, food sampling officers, public analysts—is evidence of the concern felt over this particular form of contamination of food. It constitutes a public health problem of world‐wide dimensions. The annual reports of public analysts show that many are examining foods outside the Survey lists now that gas/liquid chromatography, spectroscopy and other highly refined methods of analysis are available to them.

The paper aims to profile the Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes (WHATT) theme issue “Dark tourism – visitation, understanding and education; a reconciliation of theory and practice?” by drawing on reflections from the theme editor and theme issue outcomes.

The paper uses structured questions to enable the theme editor to reflect on the rationale for the theme issue question and the outcomes.

It was observed that visitors to dark tourism sites are often motivated by respect and remembrance and that this motivation is frequently reported by the practitioners who manage these sites.

The paper presents dark tourism site educational guidelines for practitioners.

This paper provides a rich array of insights from practitioners involved in managing museums and related educational programmes, conceptual development and applied academic research.

The following is an annotated list of materials dealing with information literacy including instruction in the use of information resources, research, and computer skills related to retrieving, using, and evaluating information. This review, the twenty‐second to be published in Reference Services Review, includes items in English published in 1995. After 21 years, the title of this review of the literature has been changed from “Library Orientation and Instruction” to “Library Instruction and Information Literacy,” to indicate the growing trend of moving to information skills instruction.