Biography

Matthew S Luckett is a/an Lecturer in the California State University department at California State University

California State University Dominguez Hills - History

Academic Program Coordinator at California State University, Dominguez Hills
Matthew
Luckett, PhD
Sacramento, California Area
I have a PhD in American History from UCLA. My specializations include the American West, American Indian history, and the history of crime and violence. My first book, entitled Never Caught Twice: Horse Stealing and Culture in Western Nebraska, 1850 - 1890, explores connections between late-nineteenth century property crime (specifically horse stealing) on the Great Plains, ineffective and incomplete state monopolies of violence, and the dual evolution of the castle doctrine and gun culture in recent American history. It will be released in late 2020 by the University of Nebraska Press. Currently, I am working on a second book project that incorporates several hundred letters that I inherited from my grandfather into a narrative of his experience surviving the Attack on Pearl Harbor and serving on a minesweeper and a tanker during the War. I have also started working on my next academic book project, which is a social-cultural history of the Lincoln Highway and its role in shaping the modern American West.

As an educator, I have taught over a thousand students at eight different schools, including UCLA, Marquette University, and Loyola Marymount University. I have lectured groups ranging in size from eight to over two hundred. I spent two months teaching English composition in Qingdao, China as part of an international summer credit transfer program.

In addition to my teaching experience, I also have considerable administrative and project management experience. For two and a half years I worked as the senior departmental secretary for the Computer Science Department at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston.

Update: In December 2017, I relocated to Sacramento, California with my family. I continue to run the HUX Legacy program at CSUDH from my home office as I work on building a new career as a documentary filmmaker. I am currently working on my first film, Earthshaking, with Emmy Award-winning director and producer Mario Congreve. I also teach courses at Sierra College and Sacramento State.