I’m Thomas Conner, a media and communication scholar with a Ph.D. in Communication & Science Studies from UC San Diego and recent Visiting Assistant Professor of Media Studies at The University of Tulsa. Before entering academia, I spent two decades as an award-winning features journalist, most notably as a cultural critic and pop music columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.
My research focuses on how people interact with emerging technical imagery — namely digital holograms and augmented reality — and how those technologies shape visual and embodied experiences. I analyze a broad genealogy of related technologies, from the Pepper’s Ghost stage illusion to aesthetic uses of optical holography and pop-culture events like the Tupac performance at Coachella. My work draws from media history, STS, and phenomenology and engages with multiple disciplines, including visual and performance studies, communication, cultural studies, media archaeology, and numerous emerging acronyms such as HCI, CMC, and HMC.
My current book project, Looking Through You: Digital Holograms and the New Technical Image, expands on my dissertation, “Learning to Live With Ghosts: Holopresence and the Historical Emergence of Real Virtuality Technologies,” by exploring how holograms function as sites of negotiation between presence and absence, material and immaterial identity, even life and death. Through case studies ranging from 19th-century scientific demonstrations to immersive contemporary museum experiences — such as the digital Holocaust survivor testimonies at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and a unique hologram exhibit at the Greenwood Rising museum in Tulsa — I argue that projected, 3D imagery cultivates what I call holopresence, an experience of spectrality that surfaces inherent contradictions within modern media.
My scholarly work has been published recently in the International Journal of Communication, Spectator (film studies), and the Journal of Science & Popular Culture, as well as in The Oxford Handbook of Music and Virtuality and a collected volume from Science for the People. I’ve presented at major academic conferences (ICA, NCA, CSA, 4S, AoIR, CAA) and interdisciplinary gatherings such as Realizing Resistance and Theorizing the Web.
As an experienced and respected educator, I’ve taught across a variety of institutions — R1 universities, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges — since 1995. Most recently at the University of Tulsa (2023–25), I taught Media History, Media Inquiry (methods), and Media & Pop Culture. There, I also designed and taught two original seminars (Music as Social Action, a theoretical exploration of protest music, and Arts Criticism in America, a historical and practical writing course), as well as assisting the department with a curriculum redesign and launching two new courses in journalism skills. At UC San Diego, I taught in both the Communication department and the Muir College Writing Program.
My academic career grows directly from my years as a working journalist. At the Sun-Times, I covered the full spectrum of popular music — concerts, recordings, breaking news, and cultural criticism — and served as both print and online editor. A pivotal moment came when I reviewed a “live” concert by the Japanese Vocaloid star Hatsune Miku, a holographic projection that inspired my M.A. thesis at the University of Illinois–Chicago and catalyzed my transition into media studies. My writing has also appeared in The Washington Post, DownBeat, This Land Press, and other national and regional publications. (And, go figure, somehow I have a Wikipedia entry in Germany.)
An Oklahoma native, I began as a news reporter and copy editor in weekly and daily newsrooms before writing about music in Tulsa for a decade. In 2000–2001, I was selected as a fellow with the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University, where I researched at the original Woody Guthrie Archives. That project laid the groundwork for future articles and the co-authorship of "Time Changes Everything," a one-act play about Guthrie and Bob Wills. I’ve remained active in the state’s cultural community, serving on the advisory board of the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival, presenting at the Woody Guthrie Symposium, and delivering the keynote at the Woody Guthrie Center’s inaugural Changing World Prize event.
In 1999, I founded the Spot Music Awards in Tulsa, an annual reader-voted event celebrating local musicians. Once upon a time, I even made a little music myself.
Today, I continue writing about media, music, and culture at my blog, Phenomenoscopy, and I previously wrote a blog about tea culture. I live in Oklahoma City with my husband of 30+ years and our very spoiled dog.
CONTACT ME for teaching opportunities, research questions, guest lectures, speaking engagements, or music recommendations!
My research focuses on how people interact with emerging technical imagery — namely digital holograms and augmented reality — and how those technologies shape visual and embodied experiences. I analyze a broad genealogy of related technologies, from the Pepper’s Ghost stage illusion to aesthetic uses of optical holography and pop-culture events like the Tupac performance at Coachella. My work draws from media history, STS, and phenomenology and engages with multiple disciplines, including visual and performance studies, communication, cultural studies, media archaeology, and numerous emerging acronyms such as HCI, CMC, and HMC.
My current book project, Looking Through You: Digital Holograms and the New Technical Image, expands on my dissertation, “Learning to Live With Ghosts: Holopresence and the Historical Emergence of Real Virtuality Technologies,” by exploring how holograms function as sites of negotiation between presence and absence, material and immaterial identity, even life and death. Through case studies ranging from 19th-century scientific demonstrations to immersive contemporary museum experiences — such as the digital Holocaust survivor testimonies at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and a unique hologram exhibit at the Greenwood Rising museum in Tulsa — I argue that projected, 3D imagery cultivates what I call holopresence, an experience of spectrality that surfaces inherent contradictions within modern media.
My scholarly work has been published recently in the International Journal of Communication, Spectator (film studies), and the Journal of Science & Popular Culture, as well as in The Oxford Handbook of Music and Virtuality and a collected volume from Science for the People. I’ve presented at major academic conferences (ICA, NCA, CSA, 4S, AoIR, CAA) and interdisciplinary gatherings such as Realizing Resistance and Theorizing the Web.
As an experienced and respected educator, I’ve taught across a variety of institutions — R1 universities, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges — since 1995. Most recently at the University of Tulsa (2023–25), I taught Media History, Media Inquiry (methods), and Media & Pop Culture. There, I also designed and taught two original seminars (Music as Social Action, a theoretical exploration of protest music, and Arts Criticism in America, a historical and practical writing course), as well as assisting the department with a curriculum redesign and launching two new courses in journalism skills. At UC San Diego, I taught in both the Communication department and the Muir College Writing Program.
My academic career grows directly from my years as a working journalist. At the Sun-Times, I covered the full spectrum of popular music — concerts, recordings, breaking news, and cultural criticism — and served as both print and online editor. A pivotal moment came when I reviewed a “live” concert by the Japanese Vocaloid star Hatsune Miku, a holographic projection that inspired my M.A. thesis at the University of Illinois–Chicago and catalyzed my transition into media studies. My writing has also appeared in The Washington Post, DownBeat, This Land Press, and other national and regional publications. (And, go figure, somehow I have a Wikipedia entry in Germany.)
An Oklahoma native, I began as a news reporter and copy editor in weekly and daily newsrooms before writing about music in Tulsa for a decade. In 2000–2001, I was selected as a fellow with the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University, where I researched at the original Woody Guthrie Archives. That project laid the groundwork for future articles and the co-authorship of "Time Changes Everything," a one-act play about Guthrie and Bob Wills. I’ve remained active in the state’s cultural community, serving on the advisory board of the Woody Guthrie Folk Festival, presenting at the Woody Guthrie Symposium, and delivering the keynote at the Woody Guthrie Center’s inaugural Changing World Prize event.
In 1999, I founded the Spot Music Awards in Tulsa, an annual reader-voted event celebrating local musicians. Once upon a time, I even made a little music myself.
Today, I continue writing about media, music, and culture at my blog, Phenomenoscopy, and I previously wrote a blog about tea culture. I live in Oklahoma City with my husband of 30+ years and our very spoiled dog.
CONTACT ME for teaching opportunities, research questions, guest lectures, speaking engagements, or music recommendations!