Volume 14, Issue 1 (2022)

Introduction

Greetings and welcome to Hemisphere Visual Cultures of the Americas, Vol. 14. This issue aims to address the complex milieu of women and their roles in the production, consumption, and interpretation of the arts of the Americas. We have compiled a group of outstanding essays that explore the experience and impact of women in the visual cultures of the Western Hemisphere, historically to the present.

It's been over a year since the publication of the last issue of Hemisphere, what was the first fully online digital issue. The world has changed since Volume 13 of Hemisphere. The Covid epidemic has taken thousands of lives and become a daily part of life in the United States. Work and productivity are being reimagined and the labor force bears these burdens. Universities have made huge changes to their classes and instruction methods, and here in New Mexico we have more undergraduate students than ever. Students too have had to adapt to these changes, and it has never been clearer in academia that we are all in uncharted waters in a new era.

When our call for papers went out last winter, we could not have known that the following June the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade. This loss reinforces the incredible need to highlight the significant role of women, women’s rights over bodily autonomy, and to establish women as equal contributors to our histories, past, present, and future. Hemisphere challenges existing historical narratives and explores the roles of marginalized contributors to visual culture in the Americas. Our authors rise to this challenge, and we proudly present Volume 14 of Hemisphere as a platform for this endeavor.