Braden Muscarello

Braden Muscarello is a second-year MA student in the Germanic Languages and Literatures Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the TA for GER 101 (B). Prior to attending U of I she graduated with honors from Franklin & Marshall College, where she majored in German and English and minored in Italian. There she also completed her honors thesis, Witch without End: Examining Depictions of the Witch in the Contemporary German Novel, focusing on the works of Christa Wolf and Juli Zeh. Her research interests are interdisciplinary, encompassing witch studies, foreign language pedagogy, the Weimar Republic, the works of Mascha Kaléko, and the contemporary German novel.

As an alumna of the State Department’s Kennedy-Lugar Y.E.S. Abroad exchange program to Oman, I.E.S. Berlin, the Middlebury Language School of German, and F&M in Italy, Braden’s teaching values center around communicative learning and the application of practical linguistic skills. She believes in promoting cross-cultural understanding through the joy of language learning and instilling confidence and determination in her students.