Morgan Brown didn’t have the normal Wake Forest experience.
For example, she didn’t have the shared first year experiences that many others graduating alongside her had. As a transfer from NYU, she went through a year of online learning due to COVID-19, before transferring to Wake Forest after one year.
She didn’t have her eyes set on a specific program at first, either.
“When I came to Wake Forest as a transfer student, I wasn’t really sure of what I wanted to do,” Brown said. “I’d always really enjoyed storytelling, and I thought about maybe going into English and being something like a prose writer.”
After trying out a variety of courses, Brown found a subject matter that not only intrigued her but allowed her to express herself on a page.
“I began to think of visual storytelling like screenwriting, and that’s what led me to find my passion in critical and creative media as a program,” she said.
Brown enjoyed her time in most of the classes throughout her studies and enjoyed learning from professors like Dr. Phillip Cunningham, Dr. Mary Dalton and Professor Cagney Gentry.
Throughout her studies as a critical and creative media major, Brown was able to explore a variety of media through different courses, including a horror-film-based course taken with Director of Critical and Creative Media Dr. Woodrow Hood.
“I really enjoyed that class because we had gotten to analyze horror movies through a more academic lens,” Brown said.
Brown also referenced courses like Feminist Media Studies with Dalton and Culture and Sitcom with Cunningham as two of her favorite courses, as well.
Brown enjoyed screenwriting, as she found that it became an outlet for her creativity,
“I used to daydream all the time, and those daydreams spiraled into stories,” Brown said. “I figured that through screenwriting, and in going into visual storytelling, I could [show] those stories to the world.”
Brown is a passionate consumer of Japanese culture, as well, specifically watching anime and reading manga. Recently, she’s been able to use her knowledge of Japanese in practice, visiting Tokyo this past spring.
“I’ve been studying Japanese for eight years,” Brown said. “When I was 14, my family moved to Fort Mill, S.C., and the local high school was beginning a Japanese language program. Ever since then, I’ve been studying it as best I can.”
Brown also enjoyed her time with the Black Student Alliance, Anime Club and Japanese Club on campus.
As for the future, Brown looks to continue exploring her passion for storytelling through screenwriting, whether it be through an internship or studying in graduate school.
“I initially took the LSAT and everything and thought about going to law school,” Brown said. “Then I realized that I didn’t want to do law anymore, so now I’m writing applications for screenwriting programs instead.”
