Associate Professor
Academic Credentials
B.A., Wellesley College
M.A., Ph.D., Yale University
Biography
Dr. Fitch joined the faculty at Marymount in Fall 2018. She moved to Virginia from Stephenville, Texas, where she taught for several years at Tarleton State University. A native of Ohio, she has also taught at the University of Dayton and Wright State University.
Other Information
Teaching Area
Dr. Fitch teaches the history of modern Europe, especially the 19th and 20th centuries. In addition to West and the World II, her courses include Race and Modern Europe, Modern European History: 1815-1914, Modern European History: 1914 to the Present, and Modern French History: 1789 to the Present. Her courses focus on European cultures, societies, and politics as they change over time.
Research Interests
Dr. Fitch is a cultural historian of modern France. In particular, she explores ideas about art, citizenship, national identity, class, and religion in the 1920s and 1930s in France. Her current book project investigates the antifascist cultural movement in France that arose during the 1930s. She has also presented this material at academic conferences and in an academic journal. She has conducted research in archives in Paris, Marseille, Rouen, Nantes, and elsewhere in France.
Publications
Mattie Fitch. The People, the Workers, and the Citizens: Antifascist Cultures during the Popular Front in France, 1934-1939. Routledge (2026).
Listen to a podcast about Dr. Fitch’s book.
Mattie Fitch. “The Popular Front and France’s Twentieth Century.” Routledge Handbook of French History (2024).
Mattie Fitch. “The Ateliers d’art sacré, Catholic modernity, and sacred art in the interwar era in France.” Global Consortium for French Historical Studies, Paris, July 15-19, 2025.
Mattie Fitch. “The First World War in Fascist and Antifascist Memory.” World War One Illustrated 25 (Summer 2025).
Fitch, Mattie, Michael Ortiz, and Nick Underwood. “The Global Cultures of Antifascism, 1921–2020“, Fascism 9, 1-2 (2020): 1-7, doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/
Mattie Fitch. “The People and the Workers: Communist Cultural Politics during the Popular Front in France,” Twentieth Century Communism 9 (2015).
