ABSTRACT
In the colonial Americas, Spanish gender norms came into conflict with long-established indigenous discourses of gender and family and gendered representations shifted in the aftermath of conquest and colonization. Gender studies in Latin American art developed first among Pre-Columbianists, and in particular, among those whose scholarship was centered on the year's right before and after the Conquest in Central Mexico. To turn again to Foucault's notion of positivity, this essay has attempted to bring to light 'the specific forms of an accumulation', in this case, the emergence of art historical scholarship on gender and representation in the early modern Hispanic world. While scholars who work on gender and representation in the history of art in early modern Spain and the viceregal Americas have laid promising groundwork, clearly many more topics want for research. Areas of strength include histories of women artists, iconographic representations of women, gender and sacred art and women as patrons.
