Professor Mair has been teaching at the University of Pennsylvania since 1979. He specializes in Buddhist popular literature as well as the vernacular tradition of Chinese fiction and the performing arts. Throughout the 1990s, Professor Mair organized an interdisciplinary research project on the Bronze Age and Iron Age mummies of Eastern Central Asia. Among other results of his efforts during this period were three documentaries for television (Scientific American, NOVA, and Discovery Channel), a major international conference, numerous articles, and a book, "The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West (Thames and Hudson, 2000)."
Victor H. Mair received his PhD from Harvard University in 1976. He also holds an MPhil degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London).
Professor Mair specializes on Buddhist popular literature as well as the vernacular tradition of Chinese fiction and the performing arts.
Professor Mair is the founder and editor of Sino-Platonic Papers and General Editor of the ABC Chinese Dictionary Series at the University of Hawaii Press. He has been a fellow or visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong (2002-2003), the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, 1998-1999), the Institute for Research in Humanities (Kyoto University, 1995), Duke University (1993-1994), and the National Humanities Center (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, 1991-1992).
