Peter Conn is Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. His publications include The Divided Mind: Ideology and Imagination in America, 1898-1917 (Cambridge University Press, 1983; paperback edition, 1988), and Literature in America (Cambridge University Press, 1989), which was a main selection of Associated Book Clubs (UK). Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography (Cambridge, 1996; Paperback 1998), was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book for that year, was included among the five finalists for the National Book Critics Circle award in biography, and received the Athenaeum Award.

Conn's next book, The American 1930s: A Literary History, will be published by Cambridge in 2008. His books and chapters have been translated into eight languages, including Chinese, Spanish, and Korean. He has lectured at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Whitney Museum, and other institutions, on a number of American artists, including Edward Hopper, William Christenberry, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Maxfield Parrish, Charles Sheeler, and The Eight.

A John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, Conn has directed National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) seminars for college and high school teachers, and was the recipient of an NEH Humanities Focus grant. He has received several awards for distinguished teaching. His teaching projects have included College 005: The Great Books, English 401: Teaching American Studies, which places undergraduates as teaching assistants in a Philadelphia high school, and English 800, a graduate course that combines the study of literature and composition with teaching training.
Conn has served as literary consultant on numerous television projects, including "The American Short Story" series, and adaptations of novels by James Baldwin and Saul Bellow. In 2004, he served as principal literary advisor to "Oprah's Book Club" for The Good Earth.

In 1993, Conn was named visiting professor at the University of Nanjing, in the People's Republic of China. At Penn, he is a member of the graduate groups in the history of art and American civilization, an affiliated member of the East Asian Studies Center, and holds a secondary appointment in the Graduate School of Education.

Conn has served as Dean of the College, chair of the graduate groups in American Civilization and English, Faculty Master of Robert Hill College House and Community House and deputy and interim provost. He was the founding Faculty Director of Civic House, the university's center for community service.

Conn and his wife Terry have four children: Steven, David, Alison, and Jennifer.