Mike Lehman
ENGL 1102
Fall 2022
Summer 2022

Georgia Tech is not a”‘house of hunger.” Geographically, GT sits at an intersection of homelessness, food insecurity, and urban precarity, yet within the borders of the campus these issues often remain hidden. As we begin to move outward from our campus, into divided Atlanta, out to suburbia, we can begin to trace how global issues map onto the local community. At the SE edge of Piedmont Park, the local company WunderGrubs converts mealworms into edible proteins to engineer an insect-centric food system integrated with smart technology envisioning a world in which sustainable proteins are accessible to all. In this course, we will work with this community partner to consider how we can move our local concerns toward a global understanding of food and hunger. By reading an array of texts through a postcolonial framework–for our purposes defined as an invitation to imagine the world as otherwise–we will explore hunger as both lack and the physical need for food in addition to hunger as desire and ambition. In the face of uneven trade agreements, war, famine, and the advancement of the climate crisis, food justice and food system vitality are of ongoing concern. By creating insect based proteins with multiple applications, from food to fertilizer, Wundergrubs seeks to advance regenerative agriculture. Likewise, we will delve into our communication tool kit to help advance our community partner’s hunger for an alternative future. Using a WOVEN approach, which considers the fusion of Written, Oral, Visual, Electronic, and Nonverbal modes of communication, we will explore ideas of hunger in an age of global crises. By creating a multimodal newsletter, videos, conducting interviews, and through site visits, students will engage with alternative ways of thinking about sustainability, food, and hunger while also advancing their communication skills in alignment with Wundergrubs’ mission.

Course Type
Course Level
Partner Engagement
Core Curriculum Requirements