Collecting Ourselves

Digital humanities has become an influent ial and widely adopted term only in the past decade. Beyond the rapid multiplication of associations, centres, conferences, journals , projects, biogs, and tweets frequently used to signal this emergence, if anything characterizes the field during this time it is a concern with definition. This focus is acknowledged and reflected, for instance, in Matthew Gold's 2012 edited collection, Debates in Digital H11manlties. The debates surveyed are overwhelmlngly definitional: 'As digital humanities has received increasing attention and newfound cachet, its discourse has grown introspective and self-reflexive' (x). Questions that Gold identifies as central to and expressive of the emerging field include: Does one need to build or make things to be part of the digital humanities? 'Does DH need theory? Does lt have a politics? Is it accessible to all members of the profession', or only those working at elite, well-funded Institutions? 'Can it save the humanities? The university?