Mapping Senufo

Mapping Senufo is a born-digital publication and research platform that critically examines the data surrounding the arts and peoples labeled as “Senufo.” It surfaces the discrepancies between historical sources as well as long-held assumptions across art history, curation, and collecting. By foregrounding gaps and inconsistencies in the archive, the project enables us to ask how knowledge about African art has been constructed, asserted, and codified over time.

Project Links

https://www.mappingsenufo.org/

team members

Co-directed by Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi (Emory University) and Constantine Petridis (The Art Institute of Chicago); for past and present team members, see: https://www.mappingsenufo.org/people

Selected Publications

Gagliardi, Susan Elizabeth. “Mapping Senufo: Mapping as a Method to Transcend Colonial Assumptions.” In The Routledge Companion to Digital Humanities and Art History, Kathryn Brown, ed. New York: Routledge, 2020, pp. 135-154.
Gagliardi, Susan Elizabeth. “Mapping Senufo: Process, Collaboration, and Generous Thinking,” Mande Studies 24 (2022): 251-263.
Gagliardi, Susan Elizabeth, and Constantine Petridis. “Mapping Senufo: Reframing Questions, Reevaluating Sources, and Reimagining a Digital Monograph,” History in Africa 48 (2021): 165–209, 429–434.
Gagliardi, Susan Elizabeth, and Constantine Petridis. “Mapping Senufo: Making Visible Debatable Information and Situated Knowledge.” In Perspectives on Data, ed. Emily Lew Fry and Erin Canning. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2022.
Glosser, Caitlin. “Making Absences Present: The Process of Visualizing Knowledge Production in Museum Records,” Artl@s Bulletin 13, 1 (2024): Article 3.