Bio Sketch

Jennifer Burns is an Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University, where she teaches courses on American political, cultural, and intellectual history. 

Professor Burns is the author of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (Oxford University Press 2009), an intellectual biography of the controversial novelist and philosopher.  Based on exclusive access to Rand’s personal papers, Goddess of the Market is the only book to draw upon Rand’s unedited letters and journals.  It has been favorably reviewed by numerous publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, The Economist, and the New Yorker.

A popular guest on radio and television programs, Professor Burns has been interviewed on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, C-Span’s Book TV, NPR’s Diane Rehm Show, and Here & Now.  She has also written articles for The New York Times, the New Republic, Harvard Magazine, Foreign Policy, the Christian Science Monitor, and numerous academic journals.

Research Interests

• 20th Century U.S.
• Political
• Cultural
• Intellectual

Publications and Presentations

• Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (Oxford University Press, 2009).
• "O Libertarian, Where is Thy Sting?" Journal of Policy History, Vol. 19, No. 4, 2007, 453-471.
• "Liberalism and Conservative Ideas," in Liberalism for a New Century, eds. Neil Jumonville and Kevin Mattson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).
• "Godless Capitalism: Ayn Rand and the Conservative Movement," Modern Intellectual History, 1, 3 (November 2004): 1-27. Also printed in American Capitalism: Social Thought and Political Economy in Twentieth Century America, ed. Nelson Lichtenstein (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
• "In Retrospect: George Nash’s The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945," Reviews in American History, 32 (September 2004): 447-462.
• "Three Furies of Libertarianism: Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Paterson, and Ayn Rand," paper presented in panel "Foremothers of Ann Coulter: Right-Wing Women and the Conservative Intellectual Movement in the United States, 1930-1980." American Historical Association Annual Meeting, January 5-8, 2006.

Website:
www.jenniferburns.org