Nancy Roche

Biography

Nancy McGuire Roche grew up on a family farm in Western Kentucky and now lives in an historic house in East Nashville. Film is both her passion and her profession. She holds a Ph.D. in English with Concentrations in Film Studies and American Literature 1930-Present from Middle Tennessee State University, as well as a B.S. degree in Nursing from Vanderbilt University, a B.S. degree in Sociology from Murray State University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Brown University. Her academic awards include The Arnstark and Rome Prizes for Poetry and the Feldman and Harris Awards for Fiction, while at Brown, and a Provost Writing Fellowship from MTSU. She has been a university professor for over two decades.  

Dr. Roche specializes in film genres, Women in Film, Cinemas of the 1960s, and American Independent Film, with an emphasis on culture studies, narrative, and gender and identity performance. Her recent publications include a chapter in Modern American Drama on Screen from Cambridge University Press, an entry for the LGBTQ America Today Encyclopedia, a chapter on Mike Nichols in The Other Hollywood Renaissance from Edinburgh University Press, and the book Conversations with Edmund White from University Press of Mississippi. Her book Cinema in Revolt: Censorship Reform in 1960s British and American Film is forthcoming from Edinburgh University Press in 2025.  She is currently at work co-editing The Impossible Shot, an academic chapter book on director Jordan Peele’s Nope, under contract from University Press of Mississippi.

Dr. Roche can frequently be found at Nashville’s Belcourt Theatre when she isn’t teaching, doing yoga, or traveling.