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Five questions with … Danielle Fuentes Morgan

Five Questions With … is a series of profiles that invites professors to share insights into their research and its impact. Rooted in the Jesuit tradition of curiosity, reflection, and service to others, this series offers a window into how scholarship at Santa Clara connects academic excellence with a commitment to the common good.

Danielle Morgan, Ph.D., is an associate professor of English and the associate director of the Center for the Arts and Humanities at 911±¬ÁÏÍø. Author of , she is also co-editing The Oxford Handbook of African American Humor Studies and writing a new book on Black millennial pop culture. 

What questions or challenges are at the heart of your current work? 

I study African American literature, comedy, and satire, with a particular focus on the 21st century. At the heart of my work is the question of how the past continues to shape the present. To explore how what we know, or think we know, about history informs our expectations of now.

More specifically, I’m drawn to how contemporary African American creatives are using satire and experimenting with genre. Traditionally, genres promise a kind of catharsis. Normally, comedies end in laughter, horror in fear, or tragedy, but many writers and artists today are intentionally refusing that resolution. They blend comedic and horrific elements in ways that leave audiences unsettled rather than comforted.

For me, this speaks directly to the disillusionments of the 21st century: the unfulfilled promises of the post–civil rights era, the burden of student debt despite education, persistent racial injustice, and a pervasive sense of precarity. Contemporary satire mirrors this unease—it captures the discomfort, confusion, and dissatisfaction of a generation that has been told one story about progress, yet continues to live another.

Why is this issue important for the world to address at this time?

This issue matters now because satire gives artists, especially those from marginalized communities, a way to voice dissatisfaction and critique the world’s absurdities without being dismissed as bitter or combative. By weaving critique into humor or entertainment, they claim agency over their experiences and invite audiences to engage more openly with uncomfortable truths. In this way, satire not only entertains but also creates space for real recognition of concerns that might otherwise be ignored.

Why have you chosen to dedicate your career to this research?

I came to this work for both personal and professional reasons. Personally, it traces back to my uncle Kevin, who was brilliant, hilarious, and deeply invested in sharing comedy with me when I was young. He treated me as someone whose opinions mattered. We’d watch stand-up routines or Saturday Night Live clips, then talk about them. Subconsciously, I think those discussions with him put me on my path into comedy studies. A few years ago, when I realized this and told my mom, she said, “Of course. You’ve been doing this for Kevin all along.”

Professionally, my work is driven by two commitments I see as inseparable: joy and justice. I want to approach literature and satire with rigor, but also with love and delight. Too often, academia discourages joy, but I believe our work can be both joyful and serious. That’s why I tell my students: what you love is worth studying. In my current book project, for instance, I take a film I adore and ask how its genre-blurring and reckoning with the past reflect broader cultural questions. By treating joy as a path to justice, I hope my work affirms that what moves us emotionally can also matter critically.

How have your students impacted your research?

My students shape my research in countless ways. On a direct level, their discussion questions often spark new ways of thinking, and those who’ve worked with me as research assistants have pushed my projects forward. But it goes deeper than that. Teaching African American comedy, I see firsthand what resonates with a new generation—what they find funny, what they reject, and how they interpret satire differently from me. Those conversations challenge me to rethink my assumptions and broaden my frameworks.

Students also keep me connected to the culture in real-time. They’ll email me about a new comedian, a film adaptation, or a book I should know about, often before I’ve even heard of it. One alumnus even told me he rereads Erasure by Percival Everett every year after encountering it in my class, which was one of the most meaningful compliments I’ve ever received.

Ultimately, my students help me test and refine my work and my theories. It’s like ‘crowdsourcing,’ in a way. And when they come back years later to say my class still shapes how they watch comedy or think critically, it reminds me that this work matters. It empowers them well beyond the classroom.

What is a book in your field that you think everyone should read?

I would absolutely recommend Erasure by Percival Everett. It was recently adapted into the film American Fiction, which is quite different from the book, but both are fantastic in their own right. The novel is more graphic and complex than the movie, but it’s a brilliant, contemporary work that still feels fresh nearly 25 years after its publication. I read it every year with my students, and each time I discover something new.

I’d also recommend Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. While not satire in the same way, it’s a breathtaking, nuanced exploration of Black womanhood that feels just as powerful today as it did nearly a century ago. Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half is also not a traditional satire, but it offers satirical readings as the characters grapple with what race, gender, family, and class mean to them in both the past and the present.

And for a scholarly perspective, Mel Watkins’ On the Real Side: From Slavery to Chris Rock is essential. It traces the history of African American comedy from its roots in enslaved people’s subversive humor through to modern stand-up, showing how comedy has long been a space of resistance and creativity. My own book, Laughing to Keep From Dying, picks up where Watkins leaves off, focusing on the 21st century.