Victor H. Mair

Who is Victor H. Mair?

Victor Henry Mair is an American sinologist and professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania. Among other accomplishments, Mair has edited the standard Columbia History of Chinese Literature and the Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature. Mair is the series editor of the Cambria Sinophone World Series, and his book coauthored with Miriam Robbins Dexter, Sacred Display: Divine and Magical Female Figures of Eurasia, won the Sarasvati Award for the Best Nonfiction Book in Women and Mythology.

Mair received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1976. He has taught at the University of Pennsylvania since 1979. He is also founder and editor of Sino-Platonic Papers, an academic journal examining Chinese, East Asian and Central Asian linguistics and literature.

Mair specializes in early written vernacular Chinese, and is responsible for translations of the Dao De Jing, the Zhuangzi and The Art of War. He has also collaborated on interdisciplinary research on the archeology of Eastern Central Asia. The American Philosophical Society awarded him membership in 2007.