Teaching Art & Politics for a Global Future

Essay

Teaching Art & Politics for a Global Future

Q&A with Global Studies Professor Andreja Siliunas
Andreja Siliunas headshot
A

ndreja Siliunas joined the Global Studies program this fall as joint faculty with the Engagements program. A qualitative researcher, Siliunas uses archival, interview-based, and ethnographic methods to study inequality, memory politics, and nationalism in a globalizing world. In 2023, she earned her PhD in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard University and, following that, taught in UVA’s Sociology department during the 2023-24 academic year.

 

During your PhD, you conducted extensive fieldwork in Lithuania and the United States. Tell us about this research. 

Siliunas: Broadly speaking, my research explores how people interpret and navigate their social relationships and networks in contexts of significant inequality. My early work focused on the U.S. public and non-profit sectors, examining how funding disparities and dependencies shape service providers’ relationships—both with the populations they serve and with partner organizations. This research led me to question how people manage their networks to enhance organizational autonomy and reduce economic dependencies. 

For my doctoral dissertation, I investigated similar dynamics in a vastly different context: Lithuania, a Baltic country transitioning from Soviet occupation to self-rule. In the early 1990s, when Lithuania gained independence, the global geopolitical landscape was changing rapidly. The USSR had collapsed, leaving fifteen former Soviet republics to rebuild their national democracies, integrate into a globalizing neoliberal economy, and establish their place in the post-Cold War world. I became particularly intrigued by Lithuania’s path to independence and the role of public art in shaping public discourse about its international relationships—especially with Russia, the U.S., Israel, and the European Union. I analyzed debates surrounding three forms of public art—political street art, monuments, and memorial plaques—to demonstrate how visual representations of both recent and distant history were used to interpret, navigate, and influence Lithuania’s international alliances and dependencies. My findings reveal that by adopting the aesthetic traditions of Western allies, rejecting those of foreign adversaries (especially Russia), and visualizing histories of transnational solidarity, betrayal, and exploitation, both ordinary citizens and elites expressed their aspirations and visions for Lithuania’s future on the global stage.

How did you become interested in these themes? 

Siliunas: I was trained in sociology—a discipline that examines how societies are organized, why inequalities persist, and how people navigate these structures. This perspective shapes how I see the world, but my research interests have been most influenced by people outside academia. My grandparents have particularly impacted my research in Lithuania. Fleeing the country during World War II, they settled in Chicago, where they built and maintained strong diasporic networks. Because of them, I grew up speaking Lithuanian, engaging with debates about the country’s history, and visiting their homeland. These experiences sparked my curiosity about life in Lithuania after their departure, especially during its transition to democracy. My interest in art, on the other hand, was largely cultivated by my mother, an artist and educator.

Andreja Siliunas stands in front of a large stone sculpture of several people
Siliunas in 2018 next to a monument to Soviet partisans and underground fighters in Grūtas Park in Lithuania.

What do you see as future directions for your research? 

Siliunas: I am currently developing my dissertation into a book, which focuses on public art in Vilnius, Lithuania, but which ultimately tells a more global story about the cultural politics of nation-building in the wake of imperial rule. Looking ahead, I plan to connect this work to debates over monuments and memorials in the U.S. South, particularly in Charlottesville. In addition, I aim to bring together my research on art and organizations in a future book project. This work will explore how members of artist collectives and arts-based NGOs in Lithuania and the U.S. have experimented with decentralized forms of organizing as alternatives to traditional hierarchical bureaucracies. I am particularly interested in understanding how these decentralized approaches address systemic inequalities—such as those based on gender, race, class, or nationality—and why some efforts succeed while others falter.

What courses are you teaching this year and how does your research inform your teaching? 

Siliunas: I am currently teaching two courses: Systems of Inequality and an Engagements course titled The Politics of Public Art. In the spring, I will also teach Art and Politics in Global Perspective and a course on global research methods. Both of my courses on art and politics center on a key theme in my research: how public art installations—ranging from national monuments to murals and graffiti-covered walls—serve as spaces where people come together to debate, interpret the world, and envision new possibilities for its future. In these and my other class, we also explore how domestic and global inequalities shape how we see ourselves in relation to others—an approach deeply informed by my research in both the U.S. and Lithuania.

The Global Studies program is an interdisciplinary, pan-University program that focuses on central contemporary global issues, such as sustainability, security & justice, and public health, while also questioning the concept of “global.” How does the Global Studies framework inform your teaching?

Siliunas: The Global Studies program has been a great intellectual home for me because of both its interdisciplinarity and its focus on transnational flows, processes, and relationships, which have long been central to my research and teaching. Teaching within this program has inspired me to more intentionally integrate the perspectives of international and interdisciplinary scholars into my courses. This has really enriched my classroom discussions, fostering deeper exploration of how local dynamics reflect, differ from, and interact with those in other places around the world.