History Professor Ching authors new book

Furman University History Professor Erik Ching, Ph.D., has written a new book about military regimes in El Salvador.

Authoritarian El Salvador: Politics and the Origins of the Military Regimes, 1880–1940, is published by University of Notre Dame Press. The book is part of the series, Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies.

In this study, Dr. Ching seeks to explain the origins of the military regime that came to power in 1931. Based on his comprehensive survey of the extant documentary record in El Salvador’s national archive, Ching argues that El Salvador was typified by a longstanding tradition of authoritarianism dating back to the early- to mid-nineteenth century.

Ching joined the Furman faculty in 1998 after earning master’s and doctorate degrees at the University of California, Santa Barbara. At Furman, he teaches Modern Latin America, History of Africa, Revolution in Modern Latin America, and Origins of Global Poverty. He also teaches study away programs in Latin America and Africa.

Ching has also co-written Modernizing Minds in El Salvador (University of New Mexico Press, 2012); Remembering a Massacre in El Salvador: The Insurrection of 1932, Roque Dalton and the Politics of Historical Memory (University of New Mexico Press, 2007); and Reframing Latin America: A Cultural Theory Reading of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (University of Texas Press, 2007).

For more information about the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies series, visit http://kellogg.nd.edu/research/books.shtml. Authoritarian El Salvador is published in paperback and as an e-book by the University of Notre Dame Press. More information about the book may be found at http://undpress.nd.edu/book/P03078.

For further information, contact Erik Ching in the Department of History, 864-294-2119, or erik.ching@furman.edu.