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The Proposal this volume makes is not only to enrich our understanding of not so well-known area studies formations in different parts of Europe´s East and West as well as the US, but, firstly, to also identify and scrutinize patterns in other cases to broaden the basis for further comparison and connection, and, secondly, to also provide pieces for a global history of the production of knowledge about the world that is yet to be written. In these two ways, the contributions to this volume offer rich material for understanding not only the histories of different academic formations but also the strategies, pitfalls, and opportunities with which a specific group of actors tried to make sense of and position themselves in a remarkably shifting global order. Suitably, these essays towards a cross-regional history of area studies not only concern specialists in the history of the humanities and social sciences but also global historians more generally.

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