  We present a systematic approach to studying the geometric aspects of Vinberg
theta-representations. The main idea is to use the Borel-Weil construction for
representations of reductive groups as sections of homogeneous bundles on
homogeneous spaces, and then to study degeneracy loci of these vector bundles.
Our main technical tool is to use free resolutions as an "enhanced" version of
degeneracy loci formulas. We illustrate our approach on several examples and
show how they are connected to moduli spaces of Abelian varieties. To make the
article accessible to both algebraists and geometers, we also include
background material on free resolutions and representation theory.
