DHC board member Beatrice Gründler, Professor for Arabic studies at Freie Universität Berlin was elected president of the American Oriental Society (AOS) on March 20. The society was founded in 1842 by Edward Salisbury, the first professor for Arabic and Sanskrit in the USA (Yale University). The encouragement of basic research in the languages and literatures of the Near East and Asia has always been central in its tradition, which has come to include such subjects as philology, literary criticism, textual criticism, paleography, epigraphy, linguistics, biography, archaeology, and the history of the intellectual and imaginative aspects of Eastern civilizations, especially of philosophy, religion, folklore and art.

The AOS is one of the few interdisciplinary academic societies representing and combining the whole range of oriental studies with regularly organized panels. For young academics, AOS provides a platform for presenting their research taking part in an international network. Until today, the AOS library is located at Yale University.

 

For further information see www.americanorientalsociety.org