American Oriental Society

The American Oriental Society was founded in 1842 and claims to be the oldest academic society in the United States devoted to a particular field of scholarship. According to the AOS the society was preceded only three organizations (all highly respected): the American Philosophical Society (1743); the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1780); and the American Antiquarian Society (1812).

The American Oriental Society has always studied Asian languages and literature, but the society's scholarly traditions have come to include subjects such as archaeology, art, biography, epigraphy, folklore, linguistics, literary criticism, paleography, philology, philosophy, religion, textual criticism. The Society is not limited to any particular time period, but studies Oriental Civilizations whenever they might have occurred.