WordWeb Online

1. An interdisciplinary field of research and scholarship pertaining to a particular geographical, national/federal, or cultural region.
   "Other large and important programs followed Ford's—most notably, the National Defense Education Act of 1957, renamed the Higher Education Act in 1965, which allocated funding for some 125 university-based area studies units known as National Resource Center programs at U.S. universities, as well as for Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowships for graduate students."

Type of: arts, humanistic discipline, humanities, liberal arts

Encyclopedia: Area studies