Agustina Checa
Email: agustina.checa@lehman.cuny.edu
Phone: 718-960-8616
Office: Music Building, Room 413
Office Hours: By appointment requested via email
Rank: Assistant Professor
Degrees
- B.A., National University of Cordoba, Argentina; M.A., Ph.D., The Graduate Center, CUNY
Biography
Agustina Checa (she/her/ella) is an ethnomusicologist working at the intersection of popular music and media studies. She studies music technologies, material culture, value, and the infrastructures that sustain independent music in South America. Her current work builds on years of multi-sited ethnographic research with independent labels that produce and circulate cassette tapes in Argentina. Checa has been a participant of indie music scenes for a decade, mostly in her capacity as a journalist and music critic for various outlets of indie music and culture in Latin America, such as Indiehoy, Revista Maple and Deodoro magazine. She has worked alongside independent bands and record labels in the US and Argentina.
Checa is passionate about ethnographic research and public-facing scholarship. She is the creator and director of Magnetismo Sónico, an open-access archive that showcases the work of cassette labels in Latin America and aims to foster connections between tape makers and enthusiasts. This project received various recognitions, including the “Digital Dissertation Award” (2022) from the New Media Lab at the Graduate Center, and an honorable mention in the Graduate Student Project Award from NYCDH in 2020.
Indebted to the values of public education, Checa champions inclusive and culturally responsive pedagogies and aims to foster engaging, de-colonial, anti-racist, accessible, and transformative classrooms. Before joining Lehman College, she taught in Brooklyn College (CUNY), tutored students at the Center for Writing and Academic Success at Kingsborough Community College (CUNY), and served as a Carnegie Educational Technologist fellow and a fellow for the Teaching and Learning Center at The Graduate Center (CUNY).
