Founded in 1881 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Charles Eliot Norton (the Society's first three presidents) and others, the Dante Society of America is — after the Deutsche Dante-Gesellschaft, founded in 1865 — the world's second-oldest officially constituted organization dedicated to the furtherance of the study of the works of Dante Alighieri.

The Society publishes the annual Dante Studies, sent gratis to all members, a semi-annual Newsletter, and an electronic version of the American Dante Bibliography, also printed each year in Dante Studies. The DSA sponsors sessions on Dante at various scholarly gatherings, publishes an electronic journal of critical notes (the Electronic Bulletin of the Dante Society of America [EBDSA]), and invites speakers to address the membership both at the MLA Convention in December and at the annual meeting of the Society each May in Cambridge, MA. Website: www.dantesociety.org.