Melissa Fitch

Dr. Melissa A. Fitch (Ph.D. 1995 ASU), a second generation Chicana, was born in Los Angeles and raised in the city of San Francisco. Her research is currently focused on transnational representations of Latin American popular culture, film, theater and narrative. She is author of the book Side Dishes: Latin/a American Women, Sex and Cultural Production (Rutgers UP, 2009). In 2008, she received the University of Arizona's Five Star Teaching Award. In 2004 she received the UA General Education Teaching Award. Since 2002 she has been editor-in-chief of the academic journal Studies in Latin American Popular Culture (University of Texas Press). She was named Outstanding University Educator by the Arizona Languages Association in 1997. Her essays have been published in Latin American Theater Review; Gestos: Teoría y práctica del teatro hispánico; Chasqui: Revista de literatura latinoamericana; ADFL Bulletin; Luso-Brazilian Review; Romance Languages Annual, ADE Bulletin and in the books Dale Nomás! Dale que va! (Buenos Aires: Editorial Nueva Generación, 2006); Latino/a Popular Culture (NYU Press, 2002) and Interventions: Feminist Dialogues on Third World Women's Literature and Film (Garland, 1997). She is co-author of the book Culture and Customs of Argentina (Greenwood, 1998). Professor Fitch is past president of the Arizona Languages Association and the statewide Languages Articulation Task Force. She directed the UA Study Abroad program in Fortaleza, Brazil in 2001 and the UA programs in Alcala de Henares, Spain in 2004 and in Segovia, Spain in 2007. She has traveled to 27 countries. These include Peru, where she studied Quechua in Cuzco in 1998; Turkey, where she studied Turkish in Istanbul in 2004 and 2005, China, where she studied Mandarin in Shanghai in 2007 and 2008 and Paris, France, where she studied French while on sabbatical in 2010. In 2011 she was named a Fulbright scholar to the Chinese University of Hong Kong for 2011-12. Her free time revolves around travel, learning new languages, working as a volunteer with Casa de la Luz hospice and dancing Argentine tango.