This book explores how the next generation of teen and young adult heroines in popular culture are creating a new feminist ideal for the 21st century. Representations of a teenage girl who is unique or special occur again and again in coming-of-age stories. It's an irresistible concept: the heroine who seems just like every other, but under the surface, she has the potential to change the world. This book examines the cultural significance of teen and young adult female characters—the New Heroines—in popular culture. The book addresses a wide range of examples primarily from the past two decades, with several chapters focusing on a specific heroic figure in popular culture. In addition, the author offers a comparative analysis between the "New Woman" figure from the late 19th and early 20th century and the New Heroine in the 21st century. Readers will understand how representations of teenage girls in fiction and nonfiction are positioned as heroic because of their ability to find out about themselves by connecting with other people, their environment, and technology.

In recent years there has been a growth in both the practice and research of dark tourism; the phenomenon of visiting sites of tragedy or disaster. Expanding on this trend, this book examines dark tourism through the new lens of pilgrimage. It focuses on dark tourism sites as pilgrimage destinations, dark tourists as pilgrims, and pilgrimage as a form of dark tourism. Taking a broad definition of pilgrimage so as to consider aspects of both religious and non-religious travel that might be considered pilgrimage-like, it covers theories and histories of dark tourism and pilgrimage, pilgrimage to dark tourism sites, and experience design. A key resource for researchers and students of heritage, tourism and pilgrimage, this book will also be of great interest to those studying anthropology, religious studies and related social science subjects.