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The Resurrection Of Former Prisons Across The World

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Prison Theory The resurrection of former prisons across the world has equally captured the awareness of tourists and scholars alike. While prison museums, as a result of their bleak and in some cases disturbing subject matter, invert the “Disney” experience, they proceed to exploit a phenomenon known as dark tourism,” . . . in which people gravitate to sites associated with war, genocide, and other tragic events for purposes of remembrance education, or even entertainment,” (Welch, 1). Generated in order to convey the aforementioned purpose, the “museum effect” subjects visitors of the prison museums to a multilayered encounter with objects, images and space. Utilizing models such as The Clink, Alcatraz, Eastern State Penitentiary, and Seodaemun prison, this papers purpose is to illustrate the success of the museum effect in achieving its desired ends of remembrance through memorialization, education and culturalization through use of images and space, and entertainment through the use of objects.
Space
In order to develop a proper understanding of the museum effect, one must understand each aspect that contributes to the effect, the first being space. No prison structure better describes the use of space than Eastern State Penitentiary. Designed by John Haviland, and opened on October 25thth 1829, Eastern State, also known as the model prison is considered to be the world’s first true penitentiary. Haviland designed the penitentiary using a new architecture scheme dubbed

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