While the lives of artists and scientists have been examined for what they tell us about innovation, The Amazing Crawfish Boat seeks to address creativity as part of a larger cultural complex of ideas and behaviors. To ascertain this inventiveness, Laudun examines the historical and cultural trends that led to this creation, drawing from archives, oral histories, and ethnographic accounts. He investigates the shops and sheds where farmers and fabricators work, revealing the immense imagination and intelligence that lie behind the bolts, welds, and hydraulic lines that hold the boats together and, in so doing, hold a way of life together.

 

John Laudun is associate professor of English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where he teaches folklore studies. He has been a Jacob K. Javits Fellow and a MacArthur Scholar. His work has appeared in African American Review, Journal of American Folklore, Southern Folklore and other scholarly journals, and he has been cited in the New York Times and many other national outlets as well as having appeared in films and television. He lives in Lafayette, Louisiana, with his wife and daughter. 

ISBN: 9781496804

Hardcover

 204 pages

6.4 x 9

Illustrated, Bibliography, Index, Dust Jackets

Umiversity Press of Mississippi, 2016