Scott Laderman joined the Department of History at UMD in 2005.  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.

Professor Laderman's first book, Tours of Vietnam: War, Travel Guides, and Memory (Duke University Press, 2009), examines issues of tourism and memory in postcolonial Vietnam.  His second monograph, Empire in Waves: A Political History of Surfing (University of California Press, 2014), combines the passion for wave-riding he developed while growing up in California with his professional interest in the history of U.S. foreign relations.  His most recent book, The “Silent Majority” Speech: Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War, and the Origins of the New Right (Routledge, 2019), uses Nixon’s most famous presidential address to probe the last years of the war in Vietnam and the rise of the modern right-wing political movement.

With Edwin Martini, he co-edits the Culture and Politics in the Cold War and Beyond book series for the University of Massachusetts Press, and he has written for numerous popular publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, South China Morning Post, and Star Tribune.

Professor Laderman teaches courses in nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. history for the department, focusing especially on the global United States and the politics of popular culture.

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