John Hartigan

John Hartigan is Professor of Anthropology and Faculty Graduate Advisor for Cultural Forms at the University of Texas at Austin's College of Liberal Arts. He serves as Director of the Américo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies, with a PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research spans multispecies ethnography, race/ethnicity studies, and science-technology intersections.

• University of Texas at Austin, College of Liberal Arts, Department of Anthropology
• Ph.D., University of California, Santa Cruz

Research Focus: Hartigan pioneers multispecies ethnography through studies of wild horses in Spain and maize cultivation in Mexico, challenging human exceptionalism while examining race as a biosocial construct across species. His work bridges cultural anthropology with scientific studies through projects like:

• Shaving the Beasts (2020) - Ethnography of Galician horse-shaving rituals
• Care of the Species (2017) - Cross-cultural analysis of racial metaphors in plant science
• Racial Situations (1999) - Detroit ethnography of poor white racial identities

Articles demonstrate consistent focus on interspecies relations (2014-2022), genomic race discourse (2013-2014), and urban ethnography (2020). His recent teaching includes courses on Technoculture, Animal Studies, and Cultural Anthropology through 2025.

Creative Expansion: Beyond academia, he explores myth-based storytelling through his novel The Last Cohort (2025) which reimagines Mayan vision serpents through AI resurrection narratives, connecting ancient rituals with contemporary technological ethics.