Bruno Seraphin

Assistant Professor

Anthropology

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Education

Ph.D., 2023, Cornell University

About

My research focuses on environmental and climate justice movements in the U.S. West, imperialism and militarism, and film methodologies. My book-in-progress examines the politics of wildfire and prescribed burning in Karuk aboriginal territory in the unsettled colonial present. A settler scholar originally from occupied Nipmuc land in eastern Massachusetts, I am an award-winning filmmaker with a BFA in film and television from New York University, an MA in folklore from the University of Oregon, and a PhD in anthropology from Cornell University. My research has been supported by organizations such as the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Center for Engaged Scholarship, and Cornell University’s Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies.

Research Interests

(On leave until fall 2026)

Sociocultural, environmental, visual, and multimodal anthropology; critical climate studies; political ecology; anti-colonial theory and social movements; Native and Indigenous studies; American studies; collaborative filmmaking; fire ecology; California

Affiliations

• Director, Multimedia Anthropology Lab
• Assistant Professor of Social and Critical Inquiry
• Core Faculty, Native American and Indigenous Studies
• Affiliate Faculty, American Studies, University of Connecticut
• 2025-2026 Mellon Foundation Native American Scholars Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow, American Philosophical Society Core Faculty, Native American and Indigenous Studies & American Studies, University of Connecticut

Teaching

Publications

Selected writing

2026 “But who were you in it?’ Wildtending and the human.” Hunter Gatherer Research 12, no. 1: 24-49. 

2025 “How Ecofascism Creeps” (lead author) co-authored with Jane Henderson, April Anson, Alex Menrisky, Shane Hall, Cassie Galentine, American Quarterly, Volume 77, Number 1, March 2025, pp. 181-188.                                                                       

2023“Indigenous Fire Futures: Anti-colonial Approaches to Shifting California’s Wildfire Relations” (lead author) co-authored with Deniss Martinez, Peter Nelson, Tony Marks-Block, and Kirsten Vinyeta. Environment and Society: Advances in Research.

2023“Settler Colonial Counterinsurgency: Indigenous Resistance and the More-than-state Policing of #NoDAPL” Security Dialogue, Vol. 54(3) 272–289.

Selected book chapters

Forthcoming: “Supremacists Gone Native,” in The Politics of the Multiracial Right, Daniel HoSang and Joseph Lowndes, ed.s, NYU Press, with April Anson.

2026 “Demilitarizing the Environment: Fire Suppression, Counterinsurgency, and Karuk Cultural Perpetuation.” With Leaf Hillman. In Routledge Handbook of Environmental Anthropology 2nd Ed., pp. 375-386. Routledge.

2020 “Wildtending, Settler Colonialism, and Ecocultural Identities in Environmental Futures,” in The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity.

Public & Engaged Scholarship

2022. “Against the Eco-Fascist Creep” (webzine), co-authored as the Anti-Creep Climate Initiative.

Selected films

2024. “Shifting The Fire Paradigm in Karuk Aboriginal Territory – 2023 SRF Lightning Complex,” with the Karuk Tribe.

2023. “Pa’asik’tavaansas kuniktáamvunatih: The Women They Are Carrying Fire,” with the Karuk Women’s Prescribed Fire Training Exchange.

2022 “Hupa Fire: Traditional and Cultural Fire Management,” videographer and editor, dir. Greg Moon, with the Hoopa Valley Tribe Fire Department.

2022 “Talking Roads: Transportation and Climate Adaptation in Karuk Country,” co-producer, co-videographer, editor, with the Karuk Tribe.

2021 “Carrying the Torch: Klamath River TREX 2020,” co-producer and principal filmmaker, with Klamath TREX and the Karuk Tribe.

2019 “pananu’thívthaaneen xúus nu’êethtiheesh: We’re Caring For Our World,” co-producer, co-videographer, co-editor, with the Karuk Tribe.

Awards

• 2022-2023 Dissertation Fellowship, Center for Engaged Scholarship
• 2021 Marion and Frank Long Graduate Research Fellowship, Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, Einaudi Center for International Studies, Cornell University
• 2020-2021 Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, The Wenner-Gren Foundation