Braden Russell (he/him) is a PhD Candidate in Germanic Studies in the Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies. His dissertation research focuses on queer Jewish literary production in contemporary Germany, and how authors negotiate concepts of “being-Jewish enough” in their works. Looking at novels written by self identifying Jewish, queer and non-queer authors, Sasha Marianna Salzmann and Olga Grjasnowa, Braden contends that these work offer ways for Jews in Germany to counter antisemitic, philosemitic, Islamophobic, and queerphobic logics. Moreover, these cultural products become a milieu for kinship and community building that resist and lay outside heteronormative and ethno-national frameworks.
Prior to his dissertation research at UBC, Braden received an MA in Holocaust Studies from the University of Victoria in Victoria, BC. He has also received a BA in Global Studies and a MA in Language and Culture – German from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. He has worked as a practicum student at the Holocaust Memorial Centre in Budapest, Hungary and has taken part in pedagogical training with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Braden’s research interests focus in German-Jewish studies, queer German studies, queer Jewish studies, Holocaust studies, food studies and digital humanities. He has published on human rights and Holocaust pedagogies in Katherine Sarks’ Social Justice Pedagogies published with Toronto University Press.