Nathan Braccio

Assistant Professor, History

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Nathan Braccio’s teaching and research focus on Indigenous history, colonial American history, and environmental history, specifically the cultural negotiations among Northeastern Indigenous peoples and the New England colonists in the 1600s and early 1700s. Prior to coming to Furman, he taught at Clark University. He recently published his first book, Creating New England, Defending the Northeast: Contested Algonquian and English Spatial Worlds, 1500–1700, which investigates the different ways Algonquian-speaking peoples and Puritan colonists marked, described, and mapped the landscape of present-day New England. He has published articles and digital projects on both Indigenous mapmaking practices and the absence of mapmakers amongst the Puritan colonists. Braccio’s next project explores the culture of agrarian violence in colonial America.

Honors and Awards

  • 2023 Small Grant for Early Career Digital Publications, Leventhal Map & Education Center, Boston Public Library
  • 2022 National Endowment for the Humanities - Massachusetts Historical Society Long-Term Fellowship
  • 2022 ACLS Project Development Grant
  • 2022 Andrew W. Mellon - Hench Postdoctoral Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society (Declined)

Education

  • Ph.D, University of Connecticut; M.A., American University
  • B.A., American University

Research Interests

  • Early American History, Indigenous History, Early New England, History of Cartography, Environmental History

Publications

  • Creating New England, Defending the Northeast: Contested Algonquian and English Spatial Worlds: 1500-1700 (UMass Press, 2026)
  • “‘Gone a hunting’: Deer Hunting and Indigenous Sovereignty in New England, 1600-1750,” in Ethnohistory 72, no. 3, October 2025
  • “Map Scarcity in Colonial New England Before 1650,” in Journal of Early American Studies, Summer 2021
  • “Thomas Graves, Phillip Wells, and Colonial Mapping in Massachusetts, 1629-1688,” in Historical Journal of Massachusetts, Winter 2020.

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