Patrick Luck

Assistant Professor (History)
Patrick Luck | Assistant Professor of History

Phone 863-874-8511

Location Main Campus

Office IST-2007

Directory Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Dr. Patrick Luck joined the Florida Poly faculty for the first semester of classes in fall 2014 and teaches a variety of American history classes, including classes on the history of slavery and Native Americans. He also teaches a survey of the history of science and technology in world history.

Luck’s pedagogy emphasizes developing students’ critical thinking skills in a student-centered classroom. In many of his classes he uses Reacting to the Past, “an active learning pedagogy of role-playing games designed for higher education.” Through this pedagogy, students learn how to think historically while also practicing and improving academic skills (https://reacting.barnard.edu/).  

Luck’s research interests focus on the history of slavery in the Americas and the United States. His first book, Replanting a Slave Society: The Sugar and Cotton Revolutions in the Lower Mississippi Valley, is forthcoming from the University of Virginia Press in fall 2022Replanting a Slave Society analyzes the lower Mississippi valley’s sugar and cotton revolutions, which occurred and were consolidated in the years before and after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and highlights the far-ranging, even national, consequences of these revolutions and what they illustrate about the functioning of slavery in the United States.

Luck’s next book-length project is a study of the intertwined lives of John McDonogh, a merchant, land-speculator, and sugar planter, and two young men he enslaved, David and Washington McDonogh. The book will explore how John’s paternalistic anti-slavery ideals opened new possibilities for David and Washington but also how the young men used those possibilities to make their own, independent lives in a society deeply antagonistic toward African-Americans.

Luck has presented his scholarship at a number of prestigious conferences such as the annual meetings of the American Historical Association, the Southern Historical Association, the Louisiana Historical Association, the Society of Historians of the Early Republic, the Social Science History Association, and the Florida Conference of Historians.

Luck is also currently serving as co-editor of book reviews for H-Early-America.

  • Ph.D. in History, Johns Hopkins University, 2012
  • M.A. in History, University of Texas at Austin, 2006
  • B.A. in History, Rice University, 1999
  • B.S. in Chemical Engineering, Rice University, 1999
  • Slavery in the United States
  • Slavery in the Lower Mississippi Valley
  • Early American history
  • Quantitative historical methods
  • Replanting a Slave Society: Making the Sugar and Cotton Revolutions in the Lower Mississippi Valley (book in progress)
  • “Undermining the Proslavery Consensus: John McDonogh’s Plans for Emancipation through African Colonization” (article in progress)
  • “Runaway Slave Origins in the Lower Mississippi Valley at the time of the Louisiana Purchase” (article in progress)
  • “Slave Origins in Colonial and Early Republic Louisiana: A Critical Approach to Gwendolyn Midlo Hall’s Slave Database” (article in progress)