Checa-Gismero’s pedagogy is anchored over a set of overarching commitments: to demystify art for students by stressing its heteronomy and its embeddedness in social life; to widen access to its study and its practice by emphasizing its histories of production over its histories of reception; and to problematize canonical elite, white-centric, North Atlantic art histories by centering the work of historically marginalized groups in the production of modern and contemporary art.
In her courses, these commitments translate in case study and bibliography selection, the teaching of inter-disciplinary methodologies, and encounters with diverse art workers via classroom visits and class trips. Checa-Gismero aims to make art history welcoming to students from diverse cultural, ethnic, geographic, and economic backgrounds, with special attention to how social inequities have conditioned students’ access to and participation in exclusive social worlds –such as the university and the art world. As a mentor, she is committed to modeling ways of inhabiting academia that emphasize the institution’s social agency and its emancipatory potential.
Students in her courses develop a hands-on appreciation of art history as a discipline, by curating exhibitions, crafting objects, and embedding themselves in socially engaged art projects.
Her teaching has been rewarded with a Periclean Faculty Leadership in the Humanities Program fellowship (Mellon Foundation, 2021), and several Engaged Scholarship Teaching grants (Lang Center, Swarthmore College, 2020, 2022, 2024, 2025). She is an Engaged Humanities Studio fellow at the Eugene M. Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility (Swarthmore College, 2025-2026).
Courses designed and taught at Swarthmore College:
ARTH094: Transnational Modernisms.
ARTH 060: Building New Worlds: The Arts and Architectures of Liberation.
ARTH 001J: (FYS) The Arts of Everyday Life.
ARTH 048: 20th Century Latin American Art.
ARTH 152: Histories of Modern Craft
ARTH 160: Global Contemporary Art.
ARTH 005: Becoming Modern. Survey on Modern Art in Europe and the US.
ARTH 046: Socially Engaged Art in the Americas.
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