Nancy Keefe Rhodes

Biography

Nancy Keefe Rhodes is a writer, editor and curator whose work covers film, photo and visual arts. She has taught in film and media arts since 2010 and published more than 400 film reviews, interviews with and profiles of filmmakers, photographers and artists, and exhibition catalog essays for her curatorial projects and others.

Rhodes began writing for Stone Canoe: A Journal of Arts, Literature and Social Commentary in 2008 and from 2010-16 was editor of its online moving images section. Her work has also appeared in Afterimage, Cineaste Magazine, Filmslashmagazine.com, Light Work Annual, Plank Road Magazine, Syracuse University Magazine and The FANZINE. She was a staff film writer for Todd Burns’ Brooklyn-based Stylus Magazine and a film reviewer, producer and host for the Clarion Award-winning weekly show “Women’s Voices” on Syracuse’s NPR affiliate WAER (2003-06). Her weekly film column, “Make it Snappy,” plus interviews with photographers, filmmakers and visual artists, ran in the Syracuse City Eagle from 2006-11. Many of her film pieces are online at MovieCrossRhodes.

In 2024, Rhodes wrote the catalog essay for Tammy Renée Brackett’s solo exhibition “Buck Up, Buttercup,” the 2024 Southern Tier Biennial. From 2017-19, Rhodes traveled to Roundstone in Connemara, Ireland, for the Inishlacken Project, an annual invitational residency for artists working in a range of media, also writing exhibition catalog essays for Bernadette Dignam and Rosie McGurran while there. She wrote the catalog text for Tula Goenka’s “Look Now” exhibition at Point of Contact Gallery in 2018, conducted interviews with participants and wrote the script (with Kyle Bass) for the docudrama performance piece “TitBits: Breast Cancer Stories,” produced in 2019.

Previous curatorial projects include “Early Black-and-White Photographs of Marjory W. Wilkins” (a 2008 Light Work Grant project later exhibited as “A Tender Record” in 2010 at ArtRage Gallery); “Hand-in-Hand: Artist and Public in Depression-era America” at SUArt Galleries in 2010 (part of “Four X Four: Community Curators and the Syracuse University Art Collection”); “Men Only: Vernacular Photographs of Male Affection from the Collection of William Knødel” at ArtRage in 2012; “NORMAL: How the Nazis Normalized the Unspeakable, Vernacular Photographs from the Collection of Dan Lenchner” at ArtRage in 2014; as well as catalog essays for Dorene Quinn’s exhibition “LAST” at Point of Contact Gallery in 2014 and “Apartheid & Identity: Race, Place, Being” (with Amy E. Bartell) at Tyler Art Gallery/SUNY Oswego Metro Center/Syracuse in 2015.

A faculty member at the Downtown Writers Center/YMCA Arts Branch (2015-23), Rhodes taught workshops in longform nonfiction prose revision and Text+Photo/Photo+Text. Both moved online due to COVID, with participants from across the U.S. and Canada. She has taught these independently since January 2024. She designed and taught Light Work’s workshop on the artist’s statement in 2019 and 2020.

A member of Adjuncts United’s executive committee, Rhodes is one of three AU representatives to the University Senate (2024-25). She is a member of WAER’s Community Advisory Board and the International Women Film Critics Circle; she was a long-time pre-screener and judge for the Syracuse International Film Festival (SYRFILM). She served on the Syracuse Public Arts Commission from 2009-19.

Education

• M.A., Syracuse University, Newhouse School, Goldring Arts Journalism Program
• ABD, Syracuse University, Maxwell School
• M.S.W., Syracuse University
• B.A. in English, Syracuse University