Melissa Fitch

Dr. Melissa A. Fitch (Ph.D. 1995 ASU), a second-generation Mexican-American, was born in Los Angeles and raised in the city of San Francisco. Her research is currently focused on Asian representations of Latin American popular culture. She is author of the book Global Tangos: Travels in the Transnational Imaginary (Bucknell UP, 2015) and Side Dishes: Latin/a American Women, Sex and Cultural Production (Rutgers UP, 2009). In 2015 she was named one of three university-wide 1885 Society Distinguished Fellows, based on her research, teaching, and service.Since 2009, she has received three Fulbright Awards: the first a Fulbright-Hays Award to China in 2010 (declined); the second the the Chinese University of Hong Kong during AY 2011-12 (accepted) and the third to spend AY 2016-17 in New Delhi, India as a Fulbright-Nehru scholar. In 2013 she received the UA Creative Teaching Award and in 2008, she received the University of Arizona's Five Star Teaching Award, the institution's highest teaching honor. 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 directed the UA Study Abroad program in Fortaleza, Brazil in 2001, the UA programs in Alcala de Henares, Spain in 2004 and in Segovia, Spain in 2007 and the program in Chile in fall of 2014. She has traveled to 35 countries and lived in South America, Europe and Asia.