World Canonical Texts and Area Studies

As I am looking at school lists, I occurs to me that World Canonical Texts as a project, is very similar to part of "Area Studies" - which usually studies the language(s), literature(s), history, philosophies / religions, and possibly contemporary economic, political and other issues concerning the area or cultures or civilization, however defined. 

It seems that World Canonical Texts, is essentially a portion of the project to try to look at the World in the manner of Area Studies - with the only difference being that the area in question is bigger - in fact, the World.