Escudos de monjas (shields of nuns): The Creole Convent and Images of Mexican Identity in Miniature (Ph.D. Brown University, 1999, 540 pp.).

A contextual study and catalogue of a Mexican genre of devotional art known as escudo de monjas. These small-scale paintings and embroderies were worn by Conceptionist, Jeronymite, and some Augustinian and Dominican nuns in colonial Mexico. The escudo de monja developed out of European roots into a new and distinctive genre of art and cult object found only in Mexico. The religious reforms of the XVIIth century, specifically the restrictions of dress imposed on the convents by the (Spanish) bishops of Mexico, were the impetus for the creation of the new genre'.