Marcus Family Global Kitchen

Students making food during a class at the Global Kitchen

Marcus Family Global Kitchen

The Marcus Family Global Kitchen is a dynamic new teaching space in the Institute for Global Engagement.

The global kitchen is supported in 2021–23 by the Innovation Fund Grant “A Global Kitchen in the Liberal Arts,” which aims to facilitate through theory and praxis the interdisciplinary study of food and its central role in the human experience. “A Global Kitchen in the Liberal Arts” also explores the importance of food security and justice through feeding others and the potential of food for global engagement and transformation.

The Marcus Family Global Kitchen has at its core a commitment to diversity of people and human experiences and seeks to include all cultures in its operation as we seek to build a more inclusive and interculturally aware community. The global kitchen promotes and celebrates the diversity of foodways and engages in the cause of social justice and inclusion by providing access to food to the hungry. We also seek to educate a generation of liberal arts students in the important practice of feeding themselves and others in an ethically grounded and environmentally sustainable way.

The curricular and co-curricular programming supported by “A Global Kitchen in the Liberal Arts” fulfills in whole or in part the five global education learning goals; it does so through the lens of food and its interdisciplinary study and through practice.

Students will gain a better understanding of a place outside their home country through the interdisciplinary study of diverse foodways and experiences.
Students will understand a global process or system that connects different places in the world; they will do so in the context of food — e.g., the global systems of food supply and delivery in the context of food insecurity.

They will come to understand differences through an engagement with others through the preparation and consumption of food in a community setting.

They will understand their home or home country in global terms. Whether through an understanding of the impact of meat consumption on climate change (the devastation of the Amazon can be linked to the desire to profit from the export of beef to other countries) or through the interaction with individuals with very different food stories, students will gain important new understanding of their home or home country in global terms.

They will develop their ability to feed themselves and others, which speaks to the College’s core value of social responsibility and action — particularly the latter, as we develop ways to pursue social justice through coming together to prepare and enjoy food together as a community.