Typically, we think of tourism as visiting some place “nice,” taking in museums, admiring architecture, and sampling good food. However, tourists are increasingly choosing to visit more challenging locales, places where traumatic events occurred and where emotions associated with those events must be confronted. We call this type of travel “trauma tourism,” and seek to examine the origins and evolution of these trauma sites, their aesthetics, visitors, funding, purpose, and their impact on individuals and societies.

Adopting a range of disciplinary and regional approaches, our study group invites the participation of the university community at workshops and lectures during 2007-08 academic year. Tentative scheduling includes considerations of several traumas and their accompanying locales: the Holocaust, Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia, and the Vietnam War.