Publication and issue: From the European South, n. 19, Fall 2026. Special Issue: Dark Tourism in Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial Contexts: Topographies of Suffering, Narrative Constructions and the Consumption of Place(s).
Deadline for proposal submission: 1 October 2025.
Issue edited by Eleonora Federici (University of Ferrara) and Marilena Parlati (University of Padova)
Publication presentation
From the European South invites submissions for a special issue dedicated to exploring dark tourism in colonial, postcolonial and decolonial contexts, with a particular focus on the role literature, language, museum culture and storytelling in general may have in representing, but also cordoning off, global topographies of suffering, such as sites of catastrophes, genocide, environmental change and neocolonial exploitation. The editors of this issue aim to critically examine the complex relationships between dark tourism and colonial legacies, postcolonial realities and imagined communities, and also the possibilities entailed by decolonization processes. We specifically seek contributions that analyze how dark tourism sites are experienced, consumed and represented, especially in relation to the Global South.
With reference to publications about dark tourism (Lennon and Foley, Dark Tourism the Attraction of Death and Disaster 2000; Sion, Death Tourism Disaster as Recreational Landscape 2014), we wish to analyse how sites associated with death and disaster (assassination, slavery, genocide, war, tragic events) become tourist attractions. Linguistic, visual and multimodal elements help to create a representation of these sites as places of memory, education, but also, quite controversially, leisure.
We are also interested in the ways in which the consumption of ‘shadow zones’ shapes these processes, both in the present and in a future-oriented perspective. We are aware that no singling out of ‘one’ memory is less than intensely debatable, since any past idea about national memory as cohesive and intrinsic has luckily often – although not everywhere – been dismantled. Thus, we would also welcome papers that help usher in discussions on the risk that memory sites (dark, in particular) may serve to reinforce overpowering ‘invented traditions’ and monolingual master narratives (see Derrida, The Monolingualism of the Other 1998).
Timeline
- Deadline for abstracts (500 words) and a brief bionote by Wednesday 1 October 2025
- Notification of acceptance will be communicated by Monday 1 December 2025, with completed papers due 1 March 2026.
- FES 19 will be published in Fall 2026
Contact details
Please write to both:
- Eleonora Federici (eleonora.federici@unife.it) and
- Marilena Parlati (marilena.parlati@unipd.it),
with subject heading “FES Dark Tourism Fall 2026”.
CFP
For further details, please check the original call inserted below.
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