Morgan Shaffer has a PhD in Literature, Criticism, and Textual Studies, specializing in 20th-century American and Southern literature. Her work primarily focuses on the Gothic in American and Southern literature, particularly focusing on works by marginalized authors. She utilizes an intersectional lens in analyzing how Gothic elements in literature are reflections and reclamations of the histories, peoples, cultures, and folklores by which the narratives were inspired and/or in which they are set. She is also interested in studying the ways in which interactive gaming, such as video games or tabletop role-playing games, interact with the themes and tropes of the Gothic to reinvent and reclaim these tropes for wider, more diverse audiences outside of the literary sphere.