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GENDER STUDIES Women in the Crucible of Conquest: The Gendered Genesis of Spanish American Society, 1500-1600. By Karen Vieira Powers. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. Pp. ix, 230. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $45.00 cloth; $22.50 paper.
Recent monographs on women and gender in the early colonial period suggest growing interest in the foundational period of Spanish colonialism. At the same time, the few general studies of women and gender in colonial Latin America tend to train their lens largely on the late colonial period. Often, too, early colonial scholars work within their regional foci without significant dialogue with those who study other regions. Karen Vieira Powers has therefore attempted a synthesis that will complement and complicate historical understanding in two broad areas: women's history in colonial Spanish America, and the more general historiography of the early colonial period, which has been resistant to incorporation of gendered realities. It is an ambitious task for a relatively slender volume. Powers, a respected historian of colonial process in the Andes, is an appropriate...