David Prager Branner 林德威

Associate Professor and Chinese Program Coordinator,
University of Maryland

The American Oriental Society

The American Oriental Society, founded in 1842, is the oldest specialized learned society in the United States.

Its central tradition is basic research in the languages and literatures of Asia and the Near East, including philology but also literary and textual criticism, paleography, epigraphy, linguistics, biography, archaeology, and more broadly philosophy, religion, folklore and art.

The rough divisions of the Society are

• the Ancient Near East
• East Asia
• Islam
• South and Central Asia

The Society’s website is currently here. A new website of research tools is currently in planning.