Robyn Barrow

Greenland, Art and Sovereignty
Homeland to vibrant communities who have forged lifeways there for thousands of years, Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat) is a site of centuries of colonial occupation and ongoing external political pressures. In this course, we will investigate the long history of the island’s material culture, considering ways Greenlandic makers have perfected technologies for life and self-expression in the Arctic, engaged both the landscape of their home and broader circumpolar cultural networks, and advocated for autonomy and political sovereignty. We will think alongside Indigenous scholars and stakeholders, learning together to tread carefully, respect communal privacy, and consider the ethics of display. A survey across time, we will examine work from the pre-modern to contemporary period. 3 hrs lect.

Plunder, Wonder, and War in Early Modern Sweden
In this course we will examine how art was recruited in Sweden’s self-fashioning as a modern European state through the lens of museum studies and histories of collecting. Gustav Vasa, founder of the protestant Church of Sweden and the country’s first hereditary monarchy, is often called the father of the modern Swedish state, and Vasa’s descendants ruled during a key period of Swedish cultural history. By examining key objects and monuments commissioned for, gifted to, or looted by the House of Vasa (1523-1648) and those close to them, we will consider how power is buttressed and imaged by material culture. We will ask, how does a Nordic perspective complicate our understanding of the Early Modern Period? 3 hr seminar