Convent Life in Colonial Mexico: A Tale of Two Communities By Stephanie Kirk (a

University Press of Florida

Convent Life in Colonial MexicoA Tale of Two Communities\nAuthor(s): Stephanie L. Kirk\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: University Press of Florida, United States\nImprint: University Press of Florida\nISBN-13: 9780813064932, 978-0813064932\nSynopsis\nThe Catholic Church produced an enormous volume of written material designed to ensure the servility of nuns. Reading this body of proscriptive literature alongside nuns' own writings, Kirk finds that practice often diverged from theory. She analyzes how seventeenth- and eighteenth-century nuns formed alliances and friendships in defiance of Church authorities' efforts to contain and control them. In the Mexican convents that form the basis of Kirk's study, nuns developed a powerful, counterhegemonic spirit of female solidarity, establishing communities that made possible a surprising degree of productive autonomy, despite official promotion of oppressive ideas about gender and religiosity. Kirk also examines the motivations and discursiv.