Area studies in the United States is under siege. Government andfoundations are turning their attention and funds elsewhere.Although they operate from very diffrent quarters, critics aretaking area studies harshly to task for both alleged errors ofcommission and omission. Yet mine is an optimistic message. Thesedifficulties must be seen within the context of a change in thedemographic composition of graduate studies in the U.S. An infusionof intellectual energy from foreign graduate students and post-docsis leading to a reinvention of traditional area studies as globalnetworks of scholarly engagement. Over the longer term thesenetworks, and the scholarship they will create and sustain, bodewell for the continued intellectual vitality of this field ofscholarship.