2023 Fulbright Lecture: ”Surfing through the American Century: How Surfing Helps Us Understand the Modern United States.”

Whether it's through music, fashion, or film, surfing today is a popular culture juggernaut. Yet it is much more than this. Taking the pastime as not merely a form of mindless pleasure, this lecture will explore surfing's fascinating yet largely unknown history, showing some of the ways that it both embodied and transcended the California dream and came to represent many of the conflicts and tensions that marked the American century.

Scott Laderman is Professor of History at the University of Minnesota-Duluth and the 2022/23 Fulbright Chair of American Studies at Uppsala University. A specialist in the modern United States, his work broadly explores the various ways that Americans have encountered and ascribed meaning to the rest of the world. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Tours of Vietnam: War, Travel Guides, and Memory (Duke University Press, 2009) and Empire in Waves: A Political History of Surfing (University of California Press, 2014).