Dr. Conn specializes in twentieth century African-American and American literature.
His secondary interests include the intellectuals of the African diaspora, critical
theory, and psychoanalysis, especially object relations theory. He is currently working
on a book project that explores issues of interracial social relations and intersubjective
psychical relations in late modernist African-American and white American fiction.
Conn's writing on James Baldwin's Another Country has won essay prizes from the Northeast Modern Language Association's LGBTQ caucus
and from the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center. He has taught courses on the depiction
of trauma and melancholia in African-American and American Indian fiction, the intersection
of existential philosophy and African diaspora literature, and the figure of the robot
in international literature and cinema. Before coming to UNT, Conn was a lecturer
in the English department at Case Western Reserve University. He is also an experienced
teacher of composition, having taught college writing at Johns Hopkins, Case, and
now UNT.