Zara Anishanslin

Represented by Chris Rogers, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency,

New York, NY

BOOKS AND ESSAYS 

• The Painter’s Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists who Championed the American Revolution (Harvard University Press, July 2025) Available for pre-order now!

• Portrait of a Woman in Silk: Hidden Histories of the British Atlantic World (Yale University Press, 2016)

• “ ‘This is the Skin of a Whit[e] Man:’ The Materiality of Violence in Sullivan’s Campaign,” in Patrick Spero and Michael Zuckerman, editors, The American Revolution Reborn (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016)

• “Producing Empire: The British Empire in Theory and Practice,” in Andrew Shankman, editor, The World of the Revolutionary American Republic: Expansion, Conflict, and the Struggle for a Continent (Routledge Press, 2014)

• "Franklin’s Gown: Portraying the Politics of American Silk,” in “Object Lessons,” Common-Place Vol. 15, no. 1 (October 2014)

Newspapers and Blogs

• “What we get wrong about Franklin’s ‘a republic, if you can keep it:’ erasing the women of the founding era makes it harder to see women as leaders today,” The Washington Post (October 2019)

• "The American Founders celebrated the storming of the Bastille: They understood that revolution means dismantling old power structures, violently if necessary" for "Made by History" in The Washington Post (July 14, 2020)

• "Crafting Protest, Fashioning Politics: DIY Lessons from the American Revolution," at The Junto (February 2017) at earlyamericanists.com

• "The Political History of Fashion," at Yale Books Unbound (December 2016) at blog.yalebooks.com

• "On African American Women’s Voices and Bodies in Colonial America and Today," at Historiann: History and Sexual Politics, 1492 to Present (July 2016) at historiann.com

• "General George Washington, Hairdresser" on The Recipes Project (February 2016) at recipes.hypotheses.org

  media interviews

• Priya Elan, “Dystopia-core: what is the new pandemic-era punk look?,” The Guardian (January 2022)

• Alexis Coe, “Why Martha Washington's Life Is So Elusive to Historians” Smithsonian Magazine (June 2020)

• Priya Elan, “And just like that … fashion memes move to the front row,” The Guardian (July 2021)

• Priya Elan, “Hawaiian shirts are returning – but ‘people want to think twice’, says expert,” The Guardian (April 2021)

• Priya Elan, “Kornacki Khakis for the Win!” The Guardian (January 2021)

  Banner Image: Dream Book Party! Complete with crackling fireplace, candlelight, and the ghosts of Huguenot silk weaving families past. At Dennis Severs' House, Spitalfields, London, January 2017