Cesar Favila’s work resides at the intersections of music history, art, and religion, often examining how the sacred and the profane animate beliefs about salvation. His transhistorical and interdisciplinary interests weave traditional work in historical musicology, such as transcription and translation of archival sources, with arguments from sound and voice studies, global music history, and literary and cultural studies. He is currently researching the penitential songs called saetas, sung in eighteenth-century Franciscan missions and resounded in contemporary Andalusian Holy Week. He is also involved in community-engaged scholarship that highlights the work of Salvadoran artists living in the United States. Favila received the BA in music from the University of California, Davis and an MA and PhD in the history and theory of music from the University of Chicago.

His book, Immaculate Sounds: The Musical Lives of Nuns in New Spain (Oxford University Press, 2023) is the recipient of the Sixteenth Century Society’s Natalie Zemon Davis Prize and the Best First Book Award from GEMELA. The book was recognized by the American Academy of Religion for its exceptional scholarship in religion and the arts, and by the American Council of Learned Societies for being an exceptional and innovative open access book in the humanities. Immaculate Sounds also received honorary mention in the International Alliance for Women in Music’s Pauline Alderman Awards for outstanding scholarship on women in music. The book’s Spanish translation is forthcoming with La Casa Universitaria del Libro UANL. Favila’s research has led to collaborations with ensembles to bring seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Mexican convent music to live performance, for which he received the American Musicological Society’s Noah Greenberg Award together with Paul Feller-Simmons, co-editor of the open access critical edition The Virgin Mary’s Essence in New Spanish Song. Favila’s other work is published in various peer-reviewed journals and book chapters.

Favila is a versatile scholar and teacher whose work has earned fellowships and grants from numerous sources, including the Fulbright Program, the ACLS, the Academy of American Franciscan History, the Society of American Music, and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, among others. He received a Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders Award from the Institute for Citizens & Scholars for his commitment to creating an inclusive campus community. Favila’s teaching has been honored with a UCLA Undergraduate Research Faculty Mentor Award and nominations for the Faculty Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring Award from the UCLA Division of Graduate Education. Prior to joining the UCLA faculty, Favila worked in graduate medical education administration and nursing, as well as having been employed as an ombudsman and church organist. He believes that music studies can offer valuable transferrable skills to students with realistic expectations about diverse job markets and with a broad subset of professional interests.