"Brides of Christ" invites the modern reader to follow the histories of colonial Mexican nuns inside the cloisters where they pursued a religious vocation or sought shelter from the world. Lavrin provides a complete overview of conventual life, including the early signs of vocation, the decision to enter a convent, profession, spiritual guidelines and devotional practices, governance, ceremonials, relations with male authorities and confessors, living arrangements, servants, sickness, and death rituals. Individual chapters deal with issues such as sexuality and the challenges to chastity in the cloisters and the little-known subject of the nuns' own writings as expressions of their spirituality. The foundation of convents for indigenous women receives special attention, because such religious communities existed nowhere else in the Spanish empire.

The popular education and adult literacy movements in Chile have historically represented competing paths toward a literate society: one born and nurtured through bitter nineteenth-century labor struggles, the other a compensatory effort by the modern state to limit the political potential of literacy. Robert Austin's book explores the contest between the state and popular education in three paradigmatic Latin American regimes: that of Eduardo Frei Montalva (Christian Democrat, 1964-70), Salvador Allende (Socialist, 1970-73) and Augusto Pinochet (Dictator, 1973-90). Robert Austin's engaging narrative captures the relationship between the Chilean state, formal and non-formal literacy, and popular education, from the demise of liberal capitalism to the consolidation of neoliberalism. This remarkable investigation of the dynamic link between the historical process, literacy, and pedagogy celebrates popular education's victory in securing the inclusion, and subsequent empowerment, of women and ethnic minorities. The State, Literacy, and Popular Education in Chile, 1964-1990 will be of great interest to political scientists, cultural historians, and scholars of education.

The American Historical Association's Committee on Women Historians commissioned some of the pioneering figures in women's history to prepare essays in their respective areas of expertise. These volumes, the second and third in a series of three, complete their collected efforts. The first volume of the series dealt with the broad themes necessary to understanding women's history around the world. As a counterpoint, volume 2 is concerned with issues that have shaped the history of women in particular places and during particular eras. It examines women in ancient civilizations; including women in China, Japan, and Korea; women and gender in South and South East Asia; Medieval women; women and gender in Colonial Latin America; and the history of women in the US to 1865. Authors included are Sarah Hughes and Brady Hughes, Susan Mann, Barbara N. Ramusack, Judith M. Bennett, Ann Twinam, and Kathleen Brown. As with volume 2, volume 3 also discusses current trends in gender and women's history from a regional perspective. It includes essays on sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, early and modern Europe, Russian and the Soviet Union, Latin American, and North America after 1865. Asuncion Lavrin, Ellen Dubois, and Judith P. Zinsser writing with Bonnie S. Anderson. Incorporating essays from top scholars ranging over an abundance of regions, dates, and methodologies, the three volumes of Women's History in Global Perspective constitute an invaluable resource for anyone interested in a comprehensive overview on the latest in feminist scholarship. Bonnie G. Smith is the Board of Governors Professor of History and director of the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University. She is the author of Confessions of a Concierge: Madame Lucie's History of Twentieth-Century France and many other books.

Feminists in the Southern Cone countries-Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay-between 1910 and 1930 obliged political leaders to consider gender in labor regulation, civil codes, public health programs, and politics. Feminism thus became a factor in the modernization of these geographically linked but diverse societies in Latin America. Although feminists did not present a unified front in the discussion of divorce, reproductive rights, and public-health schemes to regulate sex and marriage, this work identifies feminism as a trigger for such discussion, which generated public and political debate on gender roles and social change. Asunci n Lavrin recounts changes in gender relations and the role of women in each of the three countries, thereby contributing an enormous amount of new information and incisive analysis to the histories of Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay.Asunci n Lavrin is a professor of history at Arizona State University. She edited Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America (Nebraska 1989) and Latin American Women: Historical Perspectives.

'This fascinating book presents the work of nine social historians who seek to reconstruct the elusive and highly personal private lives of colonial Latin Americans. The essays analyze a range of issues from sexuality marriage, divorce, and illegitimacy to sexual witch-craft, conceptions of sin, and confession...Uniformly engaging, provocative, and well-written, these essays represent some of the most interesting contemporary work on colonial Latin American society' - "Hispanic American Historical Review".'A very welcome contribution to the study of the hitherto little explored personal dimensions of the formation and reproduction of colonial society. The essays uncover a rich set of illuminating but until now largely neglected archival sources, throwing light not only on the shifting sexual politics of church and state, the evolution of sexual constraints, and the contradictions between institutional norms and individual practice but also on the private, personal aspects of relations between the sexes with special attention to the experience of women' - "Journal of the History of Sexuality".'" Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America" presents the best work on the subject so far' - "The Village Voice". Asuncion Lavrin is a professor of history at Arizona State University at Tempe. Her 1995 book, "Women, Feminism, and Social Change in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, 1890-1940", won the Arthur P. Whitaker Prize from the Middle Atlantic Council on Latin American Studies.