Immaculate Sounds

In this study on the musical lives of nuns in colonial Latin America, author Cesar D. Favila argues that the sounds of cloisters were deemed essential for the promotion of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary and, by extension, the salvation of early modern society. Through analysis of these "immaculate sounds," rarely studied archival sources, rulebooks, devotional literature, and nun's biographies, Favila locates women's agency within a hierarchical society that silenced some women and required others to sing.