Prof. McGaughey joined the German Department in 2007 and continues to appreciate being a part of creativity and interdisciplinarity of Dickinson’s liberal arts and sciences community. She enjoys teaching language, culture, and literary studies at all levels of the curriculum. Most recently, she has developed and taught courses such as German Environments, German in Performance, German Pop! and Architecture of the German-Speaking World. In her Intermediate German course, she created content on refugee history and Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) and changed the format of exams to focus on the skills of communication: reading, writing, and speaking. Students in her courses have created podcasts and presentations on topics such as Eurogames, Berliner club history, and 19th century nation building in German-speaking Europe. Creative student projects include a ghostly radio drama and a literary talk show modelled on Das literarische Quartett.
Most of her publications, including two books, focus on the early work of the Austrian Jewish author Hermann Broch (1886-1951), in particular the role of architecture and the environment in his pre-exile literary projects. Her current research focuses on homes and gardens in the interwar period in Central Europe. An additional area of interest is now contemporary young adult literature and environmental crisis. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, walking and hiking, cooking, and listening to lots and lots of German radio. She is also an avid fan of the longest running German crime series, Tatort.