Associate Professor, Art Education

Marissa McClure Sweeny is an assistant professor of art education as well as a Women's Studies affiliate faculty member at IUP. As a researcher, artist, and teacher, McClure Sweeny is interested in contemporary theories of child art, constructions of childhood and children and visual and media culture, community-based art education, feminist theory, and curriculum inquiry, theory, and design. She has worked with pre-service school and community-based educators in diverse urban and rural settings.

Throughout her time in classrooms, McClure Sweeny worked with young children as co-researchers. Their work together emphasized understanding children's experiences of art, language, and the curriculum, and their photo-book, Amigos en el Jardin, was exhibited at the Phoenix Museum of Art. She has been especially interested in enriching understandings of culturally and linguistically diverse groups of children within the broader context of educational research, curriculum theory, and policy.

Her articles have appeared in Studies in Art Education, the Journal of Social Theory in Art Education, Visual Arts Research, the Arts & Learning Research Journal, Cultuur+Educatie, Visual Culture and Gender, and other journals. She has also authored and co-authored a number of book chapters, including "S/m/othering" in Teacher, Scholar, Mother.

McClure Sweeny serves as associate editor of the International Journal of Education and the Arts, and is a member of the editorial review boards for Studies in Art Education, the Journal of the National Art Education Association, the Journal of Social Theory in Art Education, the Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, and the Arts and Learning Research Journal. She is past president of the NAEA Early Childhood Issues Group and is currently research coordinator of the NAEA Women's Caucus and Eastern Region director of the NAEA Higher Education Division.

During her time as a faculty member at the University of Arizona, McClure Sweeny was a recipient of the Charles and Irene Putman Award for Excellence in Teaching. She has received grants from the National Art Education Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and recently co-authored a textbook, Curriculum Inquiry and Design for Schools and Community, with Lynn Beudert of the University of Arizona, published through the NAEA Press in spring 2015.