Department of History hosts book release by Dr. Tamara Feinstein

MURRAY, Ky. – The Department of History at Murray State University will host a book release talk in honor of Dr. Tamara Feinstein’s new book, “The Fate of Peruvian Democracy: Political Violence, Human Rights, and the Legal Left”, on Wednesday, Oct. 11 at 3:30 p.m. in Faculty Hall, Room 208, on the Murray State main campus. This event is free and open to the public.

Feinstein is a historian of political violence, human rights and memory in Latin America. An assistant professor in Murray State’s Department of History, Feinstein earned her doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Master of Arts from the George Washington University and bachelor’s degree from Wayne State University. She also worked for half a decade as an analyst at the D.C.-based non-profit organization and research institute, the National Security Archive. She has taught at Murray State since 2020. 

Her new book, “The Fate of Peruvian Democracy” investigates the bloody Shining Path conflict’s effect on the legal Left in late-twentieth-century Peru, illustrating the catastrophic impact state and insurgent violence can have on the growth and resilience of democratic political actors during times of war. Using a combination of oral histories, archival documents, contemporary media accounts and participant observation of commemorations, this book maps the trajectory of the Peruvian Left’s rise and fall by analyzing two emblematic human rights cases that occurred at the Left’s zenith and nadir: the state-based violence of the 1986 Lima prison massacres and the 1992 Shining Path assassination of leftist shantytown leader Maria Elena Moyano. Peru’s story illustrates the difficulties of accumulating political force during times of violence, underscores how struggles for self-defense can complicate ideological stances on violence, and helps explain the unevenness of the resurgence of the Left (the so-called “pink tide”) in Latin America in the twenty-first century.

Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event. 

Famed comparative political scientist Cynthia McClintock has praised the book, saying: “This is a riveting analysis of the rise and fall of Peru’s left during the 1970s–1990s. Drawing on scores of personal interviews, Feinstein puts us in the room where the leaders of Peru’s leftist political parties struggled to cope with the challenge posed by the savage Shining Path insurgency.”

For more information about the event, please contact Murray State University’s Department of History at 270-809-2231.