Speculative fiction requires massive amounts of worldbuilding in order to create realistic societies and cultures for the audience to understand. While there are many aspects of worldbuilding such as economics, religion, and politics that are highly focused on in the discussion of how to worldbuild, there are also elements of everyday society that are not discussed as thoroughly. One of these aspects is food. This includes both how food is produced in certain speculative fiction settings and how these different cultures interact with food items on a daily basis. In addition to the ways that food systems operate, this project looks into three major works of speculative fiction--Star Trek: The Next Generation, Battlestar Galactica, and the works of Tolkien--to analyze the ways that these pieces of fiction have or have not used food as a part of worldbuilding. Then, I use the research that I have done to demonstrate the ways in which the food system can be incorporated into a work of speculative fiction through the writing of my own creative piece, “Of Yoila and Yalia”. My research details the ways that speculative fiction tends to treat food as either a logistical issue or simply a differentiating cultural marker instead of a useful tool to build a culture and act as a foothold for readers as they access a world that is foreign to them. Through my research and the writing of “Of Yoila and Yalia”, I conclude that food is an important aspect of creating a society and a culture that is not only accessible to readers but is relatable and understandable. To overlook food is to disregard one of the most compelling elements of culture that people interact with on a daily basis and therefore miss much of what culture revolves around.

Speculative fiction requires massive amounts of worldbuilding in order to create realistic societies and cultures for the audience to understand. While there are many aspects of worldbuilding such as economics, religion, and politics that are highly focused on in the discussion of how to worldbuild, there are also elements of everyday society that are not discussed as thoroughly. One of these aspects is food. This includes both how food is produced in certain speculative fiction settings and how these different cultures interact with food items on a daily basis. In addition to the ways that food systems operate, this project looks into three major works of speculative fiction--Star Trek: The Next Generation, Battlestar Galactica, and the works of Tolkien--to analyze the ways that these pieces of fiction have or have not used food as a part of worldbuilding. Then, I use the research that I have done to demonstrate the ways in which the food system can be incorporated into a work of speculative fiction through the writing of my own creative piece, “Of Yoila and Yalia”. My research details the ways that speculative fiction tends to treat food as either a logistical issue or simply a differentiating cultural marker instead of a useful tool to build a culture and act as a foothold for readers as they access a world that is foreign to them. Through my research and the writing of “Of Yoila and Yalia”, I conclude that food is an important aspect of creating a society and a culture that is not only accessible to readers but is relatable and understandable. To overlook food is to disregard one of the most compelling elements of culture that people interact with on a daily basis and therefore miss much of what culture revolves around.

Media witnessing and storytelling for environmental justice (EJ) provide an avenue to understand the relationships between “multiple realities of environmental injury” and to analyze “fleeting phenomena with lasting form; thereby transforming phenomena that are experienced in a plurality of lives into publicly recognized history” (Houston, 2012, 419, 422). This creates opportunities to challenge and eradicate the oppressive structures that deem certain individuals and groups disposable and ultimately protect the possessive investment in whiteness. Therefore, for the purposes of EJ, media witnessing creates space for dynamic, citizen-based storytelling which can undermine narratives that promote the life versus economy framework that has perpetuated oppression, injustice, and state sanctioned violence. Media witnessing in an EJ context demonstrates the potential for collective understanding and action, political opportunities, and healing.<br/>This paper is an analysis of the process of media witnessing in regards to the Flint Water Crisis and the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and will apply an EJ lens to this phenomenon. It will discuss how media witnessing in response to these two crises can be used as a precedent for understanding and utilizing this framework and digital storytelling to address the crises of 2020, primarily the COVID-19 pandemic and racial injustice. It will then examine how the intersectionality of race, gender, and age has implications for future media witnessing and storytelling in the context of EJ movements. Finally, it will explain how media witnessing can motivate holistic policymaking in the favor of EJ initiatives and the health and wellbeing of all Americans, as well as how such policymaking and initiatives must acknowledge the double-edged sword that is social media.