Tea and Dinner with Chris Keyser

‘On Monday, Davenport hosted a tea and dinner with seasoned television writer, Chris Keyser. Chris Keyser is a Golden Globe winner, Humanitas Prize recipient, television writer of Party of Five and The Last Tycoon, and former president of the Writers’ Guild of America (West).   He was very knowledgeable about the business side of the TV industry, especially the relationship between writers & the studios. He explained how television is the premiere place for storytelling today because tv is the place for novelistic storytelling. Hall Street Blues, the most influential show until The Sopranos, changed the fact that TV had to be episodic. Now anything not on broadcast follows The Sopranos Model of longford stories. He also discussed the importance of themes to television’s storytelling, such as how his show, Tyrant, deals with the theme of how people can stay good while dealing with horrible things.

Mellon Forum: Zack Sekoff & Rose Taylor

On Tuesday night, Davenport seniors Zack Sekoff and Rose Taylor presented their research at our second Mellon Forum this year. Zack, an African American studies major,  presented his research on the history of music production, especially the transformation from having music producers to artists producing their own music. Zack Sekoff produced a large part of Vince Staples’s album Big Fish Theory. Rose, a Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry major, presented on her research on the role of gender, race, and class within the circus industry. Rose was a recipient of the Class of 1956 Fellowship, which supported her in traveling to 47 countries across 7 countries this past summer.

Dinner with Melvis Ndiloseh

On Wednesday night, students, resident fellows, and our Head of College, John Witt, joined World Fellow Melvis Ndiloseh for a dinner to discuss her work in peace negotiations in Cameroon and across Africa. Head of College Witt was very intrigued with Ms. Ndiloseh’s discussion of human rights rhetoric as part of peace negotiations. We also discussed the extent to which the US is a litigious society, the role trust plays in peace negotiations, and what happens when Western models are forced on African societies.