Definition of "apologia"

Although I've enumerated some of the academic traditions and debates that have animated this book, it is not my purpose to offer a full apologia in these brief pages.

1999, Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, Preface

“Gone With the Wind” was published in 1936, and despite heroic efforts over the last seven decades to transform it into something else, the novel stands as an apologia for the Old South — […]

2007 November 4, Stephen L. Carter, “Almost a Gentleman”, in The New York Times‎