Area Studies as a field of intellectual endeavor is under attack. And it is an attack framed from within what the discipline would usually define as its particularly distinctive strength—its commitment to an interdisciplinary approach. I will eventually explore the issue of just why. But before doing so, I think a few terminological definitions are required. This seems to be inevitable, given the way that “Area Studies” is still, quite frequently, an unrecognized term, and is perhaps a term now destined, ironically, never to catch on completely even as it is being ever more commonly used. I want to explore this imminent risk, but only in a while.

First I want to note how the popularity of the label “Area Studies” only caught on slowly, and suggest that this was because the meaning of the label “Area Studies” was initially quite often misunderstood. “Area Studies” exists only as a generic term: it does not denominate what any individual student learns about or what any individual lecturer teaches. I, for example, teach American Studies. I do not think of myself as teaching Area Studies. But I have learnt to understand that American Studies is an Area Study. In this sense, I have come to understand that I am teaching within the generic field of Area Studies, and, by so doing, am undertaking things in common, more or less closely, with those teaching Canadian Studies, Australian Studies, Latin American Studies, West African Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, Korean Studies, European Studies, and so on. This sort of framing of the term leads to the following kind of definition:

Area Studies is a generic term applied to the study of the society or societies of a given geographical space. The term covers national areas under such titles as American Studies of Australian Studies, and bi-national or multi-national regions under titles such as African Studies, Caribbean Studies, European Studies, Latin American Studies, and Pacific Studies. The empirical content of Area Studies programs therefore varies widely. Programs in Area Studies are multidisciplinary (grounded in two or more different academic disciplines and/or interdisciplinary [explicitly] integrating two or more disciplines). (Quality Assurance Agency 2002)

American Literature Journal, Amor in Pound, Classical European Literature, Homosexuality, Diastasis, Olga-Circe-Artemis, Heterosexual Love, Homosexual Love.