Dr. Morgan specializes in African American literature in the 20th and 21st centuries. She is interested in the ways that literature, popular culture, and humor shape identity formation. In particular, her research and teaching reflect her interests in African American satire and comedy, literature and the arts as activism, and the continuing influence of history on contemporary articulations of Black selfhood.
Her writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including Vulture, Racialicious and Al Jazeera, and in Post-Soul Satire: Black Identity after Civil Rights, Humanities, Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, Pre/Text: A Journal of Rhetorical Theory, Journal of Science Fiction, and College Literature. She has served as the Frank Sinatra Faculty Fellow for the Center for the Arts and Humanities working with W. Kamau Bell (2017-2018) and Taye Diggs (2018-2019). Her book, Laughing to Keep from Dying: African American Satire in the Twenty-First Century, was published in 2020 with University of Illinois Press as a part of the New Black Studies Series and was featured in The New York Times “New & Noteworthy” book review section.
Ph.D. in English literature, Cornell University
M.A. in English literature, North Carolina State University
M.A.T. in secondary English education, Duke University
B.A. in English and African American studies (minor), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill