Barbara Robins: Professor, Artist, and Podcaster
Dr. Barbara Robins has been a staple in the UNO English Department, and in Native American Studies throughout her career at UNO. After earning an undergraduate degree in studio art, Robins expanded her passions to other mediums too, eventually leading her to where she is now at UNO.
“I taught at my community college back in Montana for three years, and then when I was a graduate student at New Mexico State and in Oklahoma when I was a TA. UNO is the first university after my PHD,” she said.
Because she didn’t start in an English department, it has allowed her to connect with students across a wide variety of backgrounds and through a variety of different mediums.
“I really like teaching my courses involving Native American literature because I designed them for here in Omaha. They are always a lot of fun,” Robins said. Through her classes, she hopes to open up space for Native and non-Native students alike.
Although her first passion is Native American Literature, Robins also teaches “Bringing the War Home,” a class exploring the impact of war on those within it, and those around it including the broader community. It often includes literary fiction, film, historical documentation, and first-person accounts.
“It’s become a really important class and I’m glad I teach it, but it definitely doesn’t have as many warm fuzzies [as Native American Literature.] I’m very grateful it’s received a good solid growing audience. It’s very important and I love it for what it is,” she said.
Even though topics surrounding war can be very difficult to analyze and discuss, these difficulties often bring the best of out of students and challenges them to grow their understandings further.
“It’s always amazing to me how I have students who come from really, really hardcore military families or the student themselves are military and then I have people who know nothing or have no one in their family in the military. Of course, that’s the military civilian divide, and that’s why I started the course,” she said.
Robin's interest in bridging a military-civilian divide has expanded to her podcast with Jessie Stewart. The Face of War interviews different individuals about their experiences, as well as military culture.
As a building block on the way to the podcast, Robins and a colleague were visiting the WWI museum in Kansas City and noticed the similarities between the beginning of that war and Ukraine’s invasion. Watching people around her wanting to talk and not having the space to in the museum made her see another military civilian gap.
“As soon as I got back to Omaha, I saw Jessie and knew we needed to do something. I thought students would be anxious about what that meant for them,” said Robins.
The Face of War can be streamed on Spotify, as well as a variety of other platforms. They’ve covered topics from how the media covers war to managing the stress of watching and living through war.
Lately, Robins has also been getting back into being a visual artist and finding ways to combine the puzzle pieces of her many artistic talents.
“I’m a non-silver photographer and I’m currently doing some printmaking work down at a gallery in south Omaha, the RBR Gallery. I’m collaborating with friends on academic stuff too,” Robins said.
In her classes, no matter the discipline, she encourages her students to use the college experience as a time to explore. She understands the pressure students face with money, parents, and other expectations, but she still encourages students to slow down and look around.
“We have such an interesting variety of faculty here so move around. Try something you don’t know if it’ll work or not, and if it doesn’t, you move on, but you might be really surprised.”
Often students don’t see the ways that classes beyond their recommended course work can benefit them, but Robins encourages everyone to reconsider this notion. Academia can be in the spaces we least expect it, and personal growth and academic or professional growth do not have to be antithetical.
