Jeff Roche

Jeff Roche grew up along different spots in the Highway 66 corridor between Oklahoma City and Albuquerque.

Before settling down to a life as a history professor, he tended bar, sold cars, wrote code, pumped gas, parked cars, drove a forklift, and had more than his share of nametag jobs.

He completed his Ph.D. in history from the University of New Mexico in 2000. Since 2001 he has been a professor of history at the College of Wooster in Ohio.

His most recent book is The Conservative Frontier: Texas and the Origins of the New Right a critical examination of the history and politics of West Texas. He is the editor of The Political Culture of the New West, the co-editor of The Conservative Sixties, and the author of Restructured Resistance: The Sibley Commission and the Politics of Desegregation in Georgia.

Currently at work on a cultural biography of cereal magnate and anti-labor zealot C.W. Post, in his spare time he runs, travels, backpacks, and cooks. He has lived in California (twice), Montana, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Oklahoma (twice), Texas (three times), and Ohio. But he considers New Mexico (four times) home.

He is the founder and director of the Monday Night Mile, a non-profit that raises money for children’s hospitals.

He lives in a hundred-year-old house on a cobblestone street and walks to work at a college on an actual hill.