Biography
Braden Muscarello is a first-year MA student in the Germanic Languages and Literatures Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 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.
Awards and Honors
University of Illinois: Departmental Fellowship 2021-2022
Middlebury College: Betty Jones Scholarship for German Graduate Study 2021
Franklin & Marshall College:
M. Joseph Buehrle Prize for Excellence in the Study of German 2021
Delta Phi Alpha Scholarship for Graduate Study 2021
Phi Beta Kappa Academic Honors Society 2021
German National Honors Society 2020-Present
Brooks College House Marshall Fellow 2018
Phyllis C. Whitesell Prize 2018