Contact

I am a folklorist and essayist who somehow managed to return to the town in which he was born. I am a faculty member in the Department of English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. For all those reasons, and many more, I am delighted to help individuals, groups, organizations, and institutions when asked.

I can be reached by a variety of methods:

  • by regular mail at the Department of English, University of Louisiana, Lafayette, LA 70504;
  • by telephone at the department: 1-337-482-6906 (main office) or 1-337-483-5493 (my extension); and
  • by e-mail at john laudun (one word) at gmail or at my last name at louisiana dot edu.

If you need to reach me quickly, please telephone the English department, and they will gladly find me for you.

About Usage of Materials on This Site

Except where otherwise noted, all texts on this site are under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial. Commercial usages must be negotiated with the site owner (John Laudun). All images are under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license. Again, other uses, and derivatives, are possible but must be negotiated with me. The photos are under a separate, more restrictive, license because the nature of documentary photography is such that I feel I must respect the rights of the people with whom I work to determine how images of them or the things they make may be used.

In general, if you are using texts and images found here as part of an educational enterprise, I am more than happy for you to do so. Please simply give attribution where it is due. The same goes for most other non-commercial uses. In all cases, it would be great if you would let me know what you are using and how. It makes me happy to know that some of the materials I have created over the years are helping people, and it always makes my institution happy. I am not at present keen on badges, but here’s one that will not only tell you more about the first license above but will also take you to the Creative Commons website and allow you to explore their goals and the full range of licenses they offer. They are a great organization. Please support them by using their licenses and, if you can, feel free to donate.

Creative Commons License

Do You Have Even More Content?

Yes, I do:

Why Are There No Comments on This Site?

The short answer to this question is that this site hosts my ideas and my obsessions. Which is not to say I am not interested in your ideas, whoever you are. But I want you to host your ideas. If you want to have a conversation, then link to something I said in something you say. I should get a ping or trackback that lets me know, and I’ll update my post with a link to your post. This doesn’t always work, so if you have the time and inclination, then please drop me a note — at the address above — and I’ll be sure to list your post. I am, as the section below states, pretty generous with the content on this website. Use it, abuse it. You won’t hurt my feelings, but do give me credit when you do so. In other words, it’s really not okay to copy, paste, and run without attribution. I don’t get paid to put things up here, but some measure of my success — not only institutionally but also by my own personal assessment — is in helping others, which I can only know if you give me credit. (Feel free to send money or shower me with Amazon gift certificates, if you like.)

About this Site

This site runs on WordPress, which allows me to maintain both sections that contain one article per web page as well as a blog section where multiple articles appear on a page. WordPress is a combination of PHP and MySQL, which are both open source applications, which means they are available free of charge and users are free to change them. Open source is, like the Creative Commons, a new way to create a common culture in realms where copyright and intellectual property notions, and laws, threaten to take away the ability we have as humans to build our reality out of a common set of ideas, tools, and texts. Call it folk culture, creative commons, open source, heritage. The name doesn’t matter. The idea, and its practice, is what matters. I both salute and thank the geeks and hackers and idealists who have made not only this site possible but so much of the internet and its ideals possible.