Susan L. Burns is professor of Japanese History and East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. Burns received her PhD from the University of Chicago in 1994 and after teaching at the University of Texas, she returned to the University of Chicago in 2002 as an associate professor of History. In addition to numerous articles, Burns is the author of Before the Nation: Kokugaku and the Imagining of Community in Early Modern Japan and Kingdom of the Sick: A History of Leprosy and Japan, and co-editor of Gender and Law in the Japanese Imperium.