Faculty Spotlight: Ursula Lindqvist

Ursula Lindqvist (Scandinavian Studies) served as expert moderator for a public Zoom webinar on January 12, 2021, titled “Race in the Colonial Past and Present” with Danish-Trinidadian artist Jeannette Ehlers and U.S. Virgin Islands artist La Vaughn Belle, co-creators of the monumental “I Am Queen Mary” public statue installed in front of the Danish West Indies warehouse in Copenhagen in 2018. This statue honors West Indian labor leader “Queen” Mary Thomas, who led the Fireburn labor uprising on St. Croix in 1878, when the island (along with St. Thomas and St. John) was still part of the Danish empire. The statue was installed at the conclusion of the centennial year of the islands’ sale to the United States. The webinar was hosted by the American Scandinavian Foundation in New York and drew an online audience from around the world. The webinar has been archived and can be viewed online here. Dr. Lindqvist will also be teaching this topic in her SCA 360 Nordic Colonialisms and Postcolonial Studies course at Gustavus in Spring 2021.