In August 2020, we outlined a set of key ideas guiding our project. The key ideas remain the same, although our thinking about them has shifted as we have continued to develop our project and as the world has also changed.

Susan Elizabeth Gagliardi and Constantine Petridis

10 May 2025

• NATURE OF EVIDENCE
• What kinds of evidence from the past exists to study Senufo arts?
• How do digital technologies and methods help us identify and think about available evidence as well as prompt us to find and reflect on missing or not-yet-findable evidence?
• How can we use digital technologies and methods in creative ways to invite our readers to reflect on how any of us knows anything and what it means for anyone to know?

• LOST VOICES AND PERSPECTIVES
• When we are not able to find evidence to identify specific details or determine specific contexts for the making, use, or circulation of an object, how can we still pay attention to the people and histories we may never be able to name?

• FRAGMENTARY AND DIVERGENT DETAILS
• How can we acknowledge fragmentary and divergent perspectives?
• How can the design of a scholarly publication resist an authoritative view and instead encourage ambiguity?

• SCALES OF ANALYSIS
• How can we recognize that some observers may have focused on finding general patterns, other observers may have concentrated on identifying specific details, and still other observers may have sought information somewhere between general and specific?
• With recognition for the different scales of observation and analysis, how can we consider such perspectives and modes of documentation and analysis in concert rather than as necessarily in conflict?

• INTERACTIVITY
• How can we use the interactivity of the digital environment to excite readers to become authors of their own understandings?

• KNOWLEDGE TRANSMISSION
• How might our approaches to digital publication design echo aspects of knowledge transmission prevalent in West Africa, where communities identified as Senufo are prevalent and where elders have often taught through questions and riddles?

• BROAD AUDIENCES
  • How do we develop a publication that is accessible to and encourages broad audiences not necessarily familiar with African arts as well as more knowledgeable specialists to engage with and reflect on nuance?