Margaret Collins Weitz

Margaret Collins Weitz is a renowned historian and scholar of French women, French culture, and the French Resistance in World War II. She graduated from high school in Toledo, Ohio, and attended the University of Toledo while working full-time as a retail buyer. In 1953, she earned a B.A. in humanities from The Ohio State University and became a teaching assistant in the Department of Romance Languages. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and spent the following two years in France, studying at the University of Poitiers. She taught American literature and civilization at the University of Aix, an experience that influenced her decision to become a French teacher after returning to the USA. She earned an M.A. in Romance languages and literature in 1958 and became an instructor for the Department of Comparative Literature at OSU. There she met and married Morris Weitz, a philosopher with whom she had three children. She completed a Ph.D. in Romance languages and literature at Harvard University in 1975, and spent five years teaching there. In 1984, she joined the faculty of Suffolk University in Boston as Associate Professor of Humanities and Modern Languages, serving as chair of the department several times. She is the author of numerous scholarly articles and organizer of major conferences. Her books include Sisters in the Resistance: How Women Fought to Free France, 1940-1945 (1996). She was made an Officier des Palmes Academiques by the French government in 1991 for distinction in the teaching and promotion of French culture, and in 2003, she received Order National du Mérite.