Mapping Senufo: African Art History and the Art-Historical Monograph in the Era of Digital Publication
FAIN: FEL-267576-20
Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi
Emory University (Atlanta, GA 30322-1018)
Preparation of a digital publication that analyzes and reinterprets the term “Senufo,” a designation used for an important class of artworks from West Africa.
Mapping Senufo—an in-progress, collaborative, born-digital publication project I initiated and now co-direct—contributes to my larger effort to forge alternate possibilities for how scholars study “traditional” arts of Africa and present findings to broad audiences. Mapping Senufo also reflects a commitment to taking seriously the long-established understanding that a marker of identity, like the labeling of an art style or knowledge itself, is historically constituted, fluid, and positional. The multimodal, digital publication that the project team is developing will exemplify in its form the contingent nature of identities, art style labeling, and knowledge production. With a seven-month NEH-Mellon Fellowship for Digital Publication, I will generate text for the publication’s introduction and a chapter-equivalent section of it, and I will lead the project team in completing the chapter-equivalent section to submit to Stanford University Press for review.
Associated Products
Digital Art History and Graduate Education Virtual Convening (Conference/Institute/Seminar)Title: Digital Art History and Graduate Education Virtual Convening
Abstract: During the closed convening organized and hosted by colleagues at Pennsylvania State University, art historians and other digital humanists at different stages of their careers talked about graduate education in digital art history. As a participant in the colloquium, I talked about my experiences related to Mapping Senufo, an in-progress, born-digital publication project that I initiated and now co-direct.
Date Range: 06/2020
Location: Pennsylvania State University
Mapping Senufo: Rethinking the Art-Historical Monograph in the Era of Digital Publication (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Mapping Senufo: Rethinking the Art-Historical Monograph in the Era of Digital Publication
Author: Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi
Author: Constantine Petridis
Abstract: What might research and the publication of results look like if scholars producing them integrated decades of theories about the construction of identities and the politics of knowledge production into their work on so-called historical or traditional arts of Africa? Mapping Senufo—an in-progress, collaborative, born-digital publication project—offers a model for joining such theories with research and publication practice. It focuses on arts identified as Senufo, one of the most celebrated styles of African art since the early twentieth century. The project reflects our commitment to taking seriously the long-established understanding that a marker of identity, like the labeling of an art style or knowledge itself, is historically constituted, fluid, and positional. In its final form, the open-access, multimodal publication the Mapping Senufo team will produce will exemplify the contingent nature of identities, art style labeling, and knowledge production. It will also harness the interactivity of digital environments to render readers active participants in knowledge construction. In this presentation, we will examine how our initial efforts to map geographic locations linked to objects labeled as Senufo led us and the rest of the project team to reframe research questions, reevaluate sources, and reimagine the form of a digital monograph. We will also demonstrate how our use of digital technologies and our collaborative mode of working have generated fresh insights into Senufo arts, art-historical research, and digital publication.
Date: 02/13/2020
Conference Name: College Art Association annual conference, Chicago, Illinois
Mapping Senufo: Art, Evidence, and a Born-Digital Publication (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Mapping Senufo: Art, Evidence, and a Born-Digital Publication
Abstract: What might research and the publication of results look like if scholars producing them integrated decades of theories about the construction of cultural or ethnic groups and the politics of knowledge production into their work on so-called traditional or historical arts of Africa? In its final form, Mapping Senufo—an in-progress, collaborative, born-digital publication project that I initiated and now co-direct with Constantine Petridis of the Art Institute of Chicago—will offer a model for joining longstanding theories about identity construction and knowledge production with research and publication practice. It will also investigate the nature of different types of evidence used to make claims about one of the most celebrated styles of art from West Africa.
Author: Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi
Date: 02/19/2020
Location: University of St Andrews, Scotland
Mapping Senufo (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Mapping Senufo
Abstract: What might research and the publication of results look like if scholars producing them integrated decades of theories about the construction of cultural or ethnic groups and the politics of knowledge production into their work on so-called traditional or historical arts of Africa? In its final form, Mapping Senufo—an in-progress, collaborative, born-digital publication project that Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi initiated and now co-directs with Constantine Petridis of the Art Institute of Chicago—will offer a model for joining longstanding theories about identity construction and knowledge production with research and publication practice. It will also investigate the nature of different types of evidence used to make claims about one of the most celebrated styles of art from West Africa.
Author: Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi
Author: Constantine Petridis
Date: 04/08/2020
Location: Camargo Foundation, Cassis, France [virtual]
Mapping Senufo: From Plotting Points to Evaluating Evidence (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Mapping Senufo: From Plotting Points to Evaluating Evidence
Abstract: What might research and the publication of results look like if scholars producing them integrated decades of theories about the construction of cultural or ethnic groups and the politics of knowledge production into their work on so-called traditional or historical arts of Africa? In its final form, Mapping Senufo—an in-progress, collaborative, born-digital publication project that I initiated and now co-direct with Constantine Petridis of the Art Institute of Chicago—will offer a model for joining longstanding theories about identity construction and knowledge production with research and publication practice. It will also investigate the nature of different types of evidence used to make claims about one of the most celebrated styles of art from West Africa.
Author: Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi
Date: 09/28/2020
Location: Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts [virtual]
Mapping Senufo: An Investigation of Evidence (Public Lecture or Presentation)Title: Mapping Senufo: An Investigation of Evidence
Abstract: What might research and the publication of results look like if scholars producing them integrated decades of theories about the construction of cultural or ethnic groups and the politics of knowledge production into their work on so-called traditional or historical arts of Africa? In its final form, Mapping Senufo—an in-progress, collaborative, born-digital publication project that I initiated and now co-direct with Constantine Petridis of the Art Institute of Chicago—will offer a model for joining longstanding theories about identity construction and knowledge production with research and publication practice. It will also investigate the nature of different types of evidence used to make claims about one of the most celebrated styles of art from West Africa.
Author: Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi
Date: 10/05/2020
Location: Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York [virtual]
Mapping Senufo: Reframing Questions, Reevaluating Sources, and Reimagining a Digital Monograph (Article)Title: Mapping Senufo: Reframing Questions, Reevaluating Sources, and Reimagining a Digital Monograph
Author: Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi
Author: Constantine Petridis
Abstract: Mapping Senufo: Art, Evidence, and the Production of Knowledge – an in-progress, collaborative, born-digital publication – will offer a model for joining theories about the construction of identities and the politics of knowledge production with research and publication practice. In this article, we examine how computational methods have led us to reframe research questions, reevaluate sources, and reimagine the form of a digital monograph. We also demonstrate how our use of digital technologies, attention to iteration, and collaborative mode of working have generated fresh insights into a corpus of arts identified as Senufo, the nature of evidence for art-historical research, and digital publication. We posit that the form of a digital publication itself can bring processes of knowledge construction to the fore and unsettle expectations of a tidy, authoritative narrative.
Year: 2021
Primary URL:
https://doi.org/10.1017/hia.2021.5Access Model: Subscription only
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: History in Africa
Mapping Senufo: Some Reflections on Iteration (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Mapping Senufo: Some Reflections on Iteration
Author: Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi
Abstract: In this presentation, Gagliardi reflects on the iterative process in the ongoing development of Mapping Senufo: Art, Evidence, and the Production of Knowledge, a collaborative born-digital publication project.
Date: 07/11/2022
Conference Name: Born-Digital Publishing: Resources and Roadmaps, a summer institute funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and hosted by Brown University