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Patrick Jung, Ph.D.

Professor Milwaukee School of Engineering

  • Milwaukee WI

Dr. Patrick Jung's areas of focus include American history, German art history, and anthropology.

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Education, Licensure and Certification

Ph.D.

American History

Marquette University

1997

M.A.

American History

Marquette University

1992

B.A.

Political Science

University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

1986

Biography

Dr. Patrick Jung is a professor in MSOE's Humanities, Social Science, and Communication Department. He is a historian who also teaches courses in art history and cultural anthropology. Jung joined MSOE in 2003, and his history courses include modern European history and the history of World War II; topics in American history, such as the American Revolution and the Civil War; and the history of Mesoamerica, particularly the ancient Maya and Aztecs. He has also taught European art history and German art history. He teaches several cultural anthropology courses, including a general survey course on cultural anthropology; American Indian cultures; and the anthropology of religion, magic, and witchcraft. Dr. Jung believes international travel can be a powerful pedagogical tool in undergraduate education. From 2013 to 2023, he led trips to Munich and Vienna for students interested in seeing major works of European and German art in both cities. He has also traveled extensively in Central America with students engaged in service work in under-resourced rural communities. On these service trips, students build water projects, provide microfinance, and bring medical services to under-resourced rural communities. These trips led him to join a research team examining students' pedagogical preparation for international service-learning experiences. Dr. Jung has authored books and articles on various topics concerning American history (particularly American Indian history) and German art history. He is currently researching the early history of Wisconsin’s Ho-Chunk Indian nation and plans a subsequent study of early Milwaukee and the relations between Native people and incoming Euro-American settler populations.

Industry Expertise

Education/Learning
Museums and Institutions

Areas of Expertise

American History
German Art History
Cultural Anthropology
American Indian History

Accomplishments

Editorial Board, Matrix: A Journal for Matricultural Studies, 2025-Present

I serve on the editorial board of an anthropology journal published by the Network on Culture, a Canadian anthropological research organization. Matrix examines matriculture, or the culture of women in various societies.

Guest Editor, Matrix: A Journal for Matricultural Studies, 2025

The editor of the anthropology journal Matrix: A Journal of Matricultural Studies invited me to serve as a guest editor for a special issue examining the lives of men in societies with strong matricultures. This special issue was published as volume 4 (Autumn 2025). As a result of this issue, I was invited to serve on the regular editorial board.

Board of Editors, Annals of Iowa, 2023-2025

The Annals of Iowa was the premier academic journal of the State Historical Society. I had published two articles and numerous book reviews in this publication, and the editor invited to join the Board of Editors for the journal. The Annals of Iowa ceased publication in 2025.

Affiliations

  • Wisconsin Archeological Society (WAS)
  • Midwest Archaeological Conference (MAC)
  • American Anthropological Association (AAA)
  • American Historical Association (AHA) : Member
  • Organization of American Historians (OAH) : Member

Consulting Experience

Historical Research

https://www.dcmm.org/deathsdoormaritimemuseum/

Death’s Door Maritime Museum

I provide research support concerning one of the museum’s interpretative placards that detailed the early Native American history of the Door County Peninsula. I worked with the site manager to correct several factual and interpretive errors on one of the placards.

Historical Research

http://www.preserveourparks.org/

Preserve Our Parks

I provided research support concerning the Lake Michigan shoreline and its development to a nonprofit organization that seeks to preserve parks and other natural areas for public use. The organization sought to prevent the private development of land along the Lake Michigan shoreline in order to maintain the land for public purposes. I conducted research into the previous use of the land for use in courtroom litigation.

Historical Research

https://www.lord.ca/

Lord Cultural Resources

I provided research concerning the treaties signed by the Potawatomi Indians with the United States and Canadian governments. Lord Cultural Resources hired me to do this work for the Forest County Potawatomi of Wisconsin for a museum display that illustrates and describes all the treaties that the tribe has signed in its history.

Languages

  • English
  • German

Social

Media Appearances

Interview: The Rise and Fall of “Chief” Black Hawk, 2026

Prairie Farm Podcast  online

2026-02-27

This interview covered the Black Hawk War of 1832 and its influence on Midwest history. Hoksey Native Seeds sponsors this podcast, which examines Midwest history, culture, and agriculture.

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Interview: Geraubtes Wirtschaftswunder: Die übertünchte Vergangenheit der Deutschen (Stolen Economic Miracle: The Whitewashed Past of the Germans), 2025

ZDF/Arte Television  tv

2025-10-14

This interview concerned my research on painter Erich Mercker for a documentary about post-World War II Germans' desire to largely whitewash Germany’s history during the Nazi period. It focused on the painter Erich Mercker, who repainted his work to hide overtly Nazi symbols.

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Interview: Father Marquette 350th Anniversary, 2023

Marquette County Tribune  print

2023-05-11

This story announced a talk I was to give at the Marquette County Historical Society on French exploration of the Great Lakes, as part of the 350th-anniversary commemoration of Jacques Marquette’s exploration of the Mississippi River.

Event and Speaking Appearances

The Battle of Wisconsin Heights: Know Its Past, Save Its Future

Friends of the Lower Wisconsin Riverway (FLOW) Annual Meeting  Spring Green, Wisconsin

2026-08-22

The Métis People of the Portage

The Big Picture Speaker Series  Historic Indian Agency House, Portage, Wisconsin

2026-08-11

The American Revolution in Wisconsin, the Western Great Lakes, and the Mississippi Valley

Beyond the Page Speaker Series  Dane County Library Service, Mazomanie, Wisconsin

2026-07-25

Teaching Areas

American History

General survey of American history from late prehistory to the end of the twentieth century. Includes specific courses on the American Revolution and the American Civil War and Reconstruction.

Mesoamerican History

General survey of Mesoamerican history with emphasis on the Maya and Aztecs in support of a short-term trip to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico that allows students to learn more about Mesoamerican history.

European History, German History, and World War II

General survey of European history and a specific course on German history from prehistory to the present; also a course on the history of World War II.

Research Interests

Indian-White Relations in the North American Great Lakes Region

My research focuses on Indian-White relations in the North American Great Lakes region from the Age of Exploration to the reservation era. I have researched extensively on early French exploration of the Great Lakes as well as various conflicts including the War of 1812, the Winnebago Uprising of 1827, and the Black Hawk War of 1832.

German Art History

My research focuses particularly on twentieth-century German artists who have produced visual depictions of industry and industrial landscapes. I have written a biography of one of the most prominent German industrial artists, Erich Mercker, and I am conducting research on other industrial artists who worked contemporaneously with Mercker. Related to this is my research on Nazi-era art, as the cultural bureaucracy of the Third Reich actively patronized industrial artists in the 1930s and 1940s.

International Service-Learning and Humanitarian Experiences

Along with a research team composed of three other faculty members, I have undertaken an examination of how best to prepare undergraduate students for international service-learning experiences. Currently, my research team is conducting a ten-year longitudinal study of students who have participated in service-learning trips to various countries in Central America. The research team will use the data from this study to develop a curriculum for students who will engage in international service-learning opportunities.

Research Grants

Visiting Research Fellowship, British Library, London

Eccles Centre for American Studies £4000

2026-06-01

The Eccles Centre for American Studies provides grants to researchers who wish to visit the British Library in London to use the vast manuscript collections in the library's possession. I visited London for five weeks in the summer of 2022 to look at the papers of General Frederick Haldimand, who commanded British forces in the Great Lakes region from the 1760s to the 1780s.

Professional Summer Development Grant

MSOE Development Committee

2019-05-15

The Milwaukee School of Engineering provides grants to faculty members who develop special projects in the summer that benefit the university. I received a $6,100 grant along with three other faculty members to fund a project titled “Academic Value of Student Preparation for Short-Term Humanitarian International Experiences.” This was an IRB-approved research project to examine the effectiveness of coursework for better preparing students for short-term international humanitarian missions.

Theodore and Anna Grollmann Fund

Theodore and Anna Grollmann Fund

2016-04-15

This grant covered the costs to produce a booklet describing the various German artists whose works are part of the collection of the Grohmann Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Selected Publications

XRF Examination of the Overpainting of Fascist Symbols in a Painting by Erich Mercker

npj Heritage Science

Mantouvalou, Ioanna; Na’es, Maram; Wagener, Yannick; Bauer, Magnus; Schuhbauer, Thomas; Jung, Patrick J.

2026-09-01

Erich Mercker was a successful impressionist painter in mid-20th century Germany. While his illustration of industrial subjects made him especially successful during the National Socialist (Nazi) period, his career lasted from 1920 to 1973. We present the analysis of ‘Die Stätte des 9. November’ and prove that Nazi symbolism was overpainted post-factum. Using X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy techniques in combination with a discussion of the historical context we propose that the painting, depicting a Nazi monument, was produced in November 1934 and changed after 1945. This work thus gives the first definite proof of an overpainting in Mercker’s oeuvre.

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Review Essay: Men and Matriculture Among the Ho-Chunks

Matrix: A Journal for Matricultural Studies

Jung, Patrick J.

2025-10-01

Two of the most important works in American Indian autobiography are Sam Blowsnake's An Autobiography of Winnebago Indian (1920), edited by Paul Radin, and Stella Blowsnake Whitepine Stacy's Mountain Wolf Woman, Sister of Crashing Thunder: The Autobiography of a Winnebago Indian (1961), edited by Nancy Oestreich Lurie. The central figures in both works are brother and sister, and together they offer an excellent ethnographic study of the relationships Ho-Chunk men developed with consanguineous relations (particularly their sisters) and affinal relations (notably their wives). They also reveal that often Ho-Chunk had more substantial relationships with their sisters and their children than with their wives and their own children.

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Men and Masculinities from Matricultural Perspectives: An Introduction

Matrix: A Journal of Matricultural Studies

Jung, Patrick J.

2025-10-01

This essay introduces a special issue of the journal Matrix that examines the lives of men in societies that possess strong matricultures. This is a new area of anthropological investigation, and while this issue presents new perspectives on the topic, much additional research remains to be done.

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