Brandi Bushman

Dr. Brandi Bushman serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies within the College of Letters and Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where she contributes to interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of Indigenous, critical race, and ethnic studies.

Academic Background:

• BA in English, UC Santa Barbara
• MA in English, Princeton University
• PhD in English, Princeton University

Research Focus: As an enrolled member of the Picayune Rancheria of Chukchansi Indians, Dr. Bushman's work centers on Native American literary expressions of social death and resistance under settler colonialism. Her scholarship critically examines racial capitalism, affective structures in Indigenous literatures, and the limitations of both tribal nationalism and neoliberal multiculturalism through decolonial and Marxist theoretical frameworks. She investigates how contemporary Native American writers from the American West articulate experiences of illegibility, exile, and fugitivity that challenge state logics of recognition and incorporation.

Awards and Recognition:

• Mellon Gateway Postdoctoral Fellowship in Native American and Indigenous Studies (Brown University)

Current Scholarship: Her book project Sovereignty’s Glitch: Negative Affects and Structures of Feeling in Native American Literature pioneers analysis of 21st-century Native American literary works through affect theory and political economy, arguing that expressions of negative affect constitute radical refusals of settler colonial repair mechanisms rather than pathways to inclusion. This research significantly advances decolonial theory by centering Indigenous perspectives on sovereignty beyond state recognition frameworks.