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Study shows food from tobacco-owned brands more ‘hyperpalatable’ than competitors’ food
LAWRENCE — An investigator at the University of Kansas has conducted research showing food brands owned by tobacco companies — which invested heavily into the U.S. food industry in the 1980s — appear to have “selectively disseminated hyperpalatable foods” to American consumers. “Hyperpalatable” foods are those featuring purposely tempting combinations of salts, fats and sugars. The study was published today in the peer-reviewed journal Addiction.

Reliance on student punishment in schools needs reconsideration, article argues
LAWRENCE — Schools and prisons share many similarities: authoritarian structure, emphasis on silence and order, schedules to follow, rules not to break. The parallels are the subject of a University of Kansas scholar’s new article published in the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics. “Teachers and administrators need to discontinue the relationship between punishment and education and begin to create environments where students can thrive in nonpunitive ways,” said author Nikia Robert, assistant professor of religious studies.

Full stories below.

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Contact: Brendan Lynch, KU News Service, 785-864-8855, [email protected], @BrendanMLynch
Study shows food from tobacco-owned brands more ‘hyperpalatable’ than competitors’ food
LAWRENCE — Many of us know all too well the addictive nature of a big portion of food in the United States — most call it “junk food.” In fact, this kind of salty, sweet and high-fat fare makes up the lion’s share of what’s marketed to Americans.
Researchers employ a more scholarly term for food items featuring purposely tempting combinations of salts, fats and sugars: They’re “hyperpalatable.”
Now, an investigator at the University of Kansas has conducted research showing food brands owned by tobacco companies — which invested heavily into the U.S. food industry in the 1980s — appear to have “selectively disseminated hyperpalatable foods” to American consumers.
The study was published today in the peer-reviewed journal Addiction.

“We used multiple sources of data to examine the question, ‘In what ways were U.S. tobacco companies involved in the promotion and spread of hyperpalatable food into our food system?’” said lead author Tera Fazzino, assistant professor of psychology at KU and associate director of the Cofrin Logan Center for Addiction Research and Treatment at the KU Life Span Institute. “Hyperpalatable foods can be irresistible and difficult to stop eating. They have combinations of palatability-related nutrients, specifically fat, sugar, sodium or other carbohydrates that occur in combinations together.”
Fazzino’s previous work has shown today that 68% of the American food supply is hyperpalatable.
“These combinations of nutrients provide a really enhanced eating experience and make them difficult to stop eating,” she said. “These effects are different than if you just had something high in fat but had no sugar, salt or other type of refined carbohydrate.”
Fazzino and her co-authors found between 1988 and 2001, tobacco-owned foods were 29% more likely to be classified as fat-and-sodium hyperpalatable and 80% more likely to be classified as carbohydrate-and-sodium hyperpalatable than foods that were not tobacco-owned.
The KU researchers used data from a public repository of internal tobacco industry documents to determine ownership of food companies, then combed nutrition data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in longitudinal analyses to estimate how much foods were “formulated to be hyperpalatable, based on tobacco ownership.”
“The question about their intent —we can’t really say from this data,” Fazzino said. “But what we can say is there’s evidence to indicate tobacco companies were consistently involved with owning and developing hyperpalatable foods during the time that they were leading our food system. Their involvement was selective in nature and different from the companies that didn’t have a parent tobacco-company ownership.”
Fazzino’s co-authors were KU doctoral students Daiil Jun and Kayla Bjorlie, along with Lynn Chollet Hinton, assistant professor of biostatistics and data science at KU Medical Center.
The KU researchers said they built their investigation inspired by earlier work by Laura Schmidt at the University of California-San Francisco.
“She and her team established that the same tobacco companies were involved in the development and heavy marketing of sugary drinks to kids — that was R.J. Reynolds — and that Philip Morris was involved in the direct transfer of tobacco marketing strategies targeting racial and ethnic minority communities in the U.S. to sell their food products,” Fazzino said.
While tobacco companies divested from the U.S. food system between the early to mid-2000s, perhaps the shadow of Big Tobacco has remained. The new KU study finds the availability of fat-and-sodium hyperpalatable foods (more than 57%) and carbohydrate-and-sodium hyperpalatable foods (more than 17%) was still high in 2018, regardless of prior tobacco ownership, showing these foods have become mainstays of the American diet.
“The majority of what’s out there in our food supply falls under the hyperpalatable category,” Fazzino said. “It’s actually a bit difficult to track down food that’s not hyperpalatable. In our day-to-day lives, the foods we’re surrounded by and can easily grab are mostly the hyperpalatable ones. And foods that are not hyperpalatable, such as fresh fruits and vegetables – they’re not just hard to find, they’re also more expensive. We don’t really have many choices when it comes to picking between foods that are fresh and enjoyable to eat (e.g., a crisp apple) and foods that you just can’t stop eating.”
Fazzino said using metrics of hyperpalatability could be one way to regulate formulations of food that are engineered to induce sustained eating.
“These foods have combinations of ingredients that create effects you don’t get when you eat those ingredients separately,” the KU researcher said. “And guess what? These combinations don’t really exist in nature, so our bodies aren’t ready to handle them. They can excessively trigger our brain’s reward system and disrupt our fullness signals, which is why they’re difficult to resist.”
As a result, consumers of hyperpalatable foods are more prone to obesity and related health consequences, even when they don’t intend to overeat.
“These foods may be designed to make you eat more than you planned,” Fazzino said. “It’s not just about personal choice and watching what you eat – they can kind of trick your body into eating more than you actually want.”
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Contact: Jon Niccum, KU News Service, 785-864-7633, [email protected]
Reliance on student punishment in schools needs reconsideration, article argues
LAWRENCE — Schools and prisons share many similarities: authoritarian structure, emphasis on silence and order, schedules to follow, rules not to break.
“Teachers and administrators need to discontinue the relationship between punishment and education and begin to create environments where students can thrive in nonpunitive ways,” said Nikia Robert, assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Kansas.
Her article titled “An Ethic of Abolition: Becoming Educational Sanctuaries” addresses the uncanny resemblance between the educational/industrial complex and the U.S. carceral state. Both employ policies, pedagogies and practices to respond punitively to com¬munal transgressions. In response, Robert offers an abolitionist theological ethic to create educational sanctuaries. It appears in the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics.
“We use punishment to scare people into obedience,” Robert said. “But what you produce are robots, not sentient beings with critical thinking who are accountable and aware of how their actions may harm others. As a professor, I’m always looking for transformative ways to build work ethic and curiosity, so students aren’t motivated to produce simply based on their fear of being punished.”
Robert also argues how students in underrepresented groups — ranging from pre-K to postsecondary institutions — become particularly vulnerable when punishment is used to “perpetuate anti-Blackness, patriarchy and other social inequities.” This in many ways mirrors the carceral system, she said.
The educator became further mindful of the similarities found in schools and prisons when teaching an Inside-Out course at a state prison.
“When you look at the yard versus a college campus, it appears very similar,” she said.
Her course was called “Prisons, Punishment and Redemption,” taught at the California Institution for Women in Chino.
“A lot of the women there were lifers,” she said. “It was a really meaningful course for them and for me. I hope to bring something like it here to Kansas — we certainly have plenty of prisons.”
Robert said that schools are not doing enough to make a distinction between a classroom and a jail cell.
“We’re here as educators wanting to create sanctuaries so that students can thrive as whole beings. We don’t want these kinds of docile, empty people who are afraid of consequences,” she said.
“We can start by looking at more equitable grading strategies. Using rubrics, using more marginal comments, allowing students to have retakes. So in other words, moving away from this rigid and punitive model and doing more to cultivate the whole student.”
As her article notes, Robert maintains a personal connection to this topic. Her daughter currently attends a K-8 private school in California.
“She’s been so deeply affected by the detention system,” Robert said. “So much so that if it was cold and she didn’t have a hat or coat that conform to their uniform policy, she would risk her own health rather than violate the policy out of fear of getting detention. I could not convince her otherwise because my daughter is a rule-follower.”
Since that situation emerged, Robert has been working with the school to put an end to detention.
“Why would an educational institution have detention? That’s something you find in a prison,” she said. “Surely, we can be more creative and spend more effort to think of ways to respond to harms, other than just saying, ‘Go to detention!’”
A New York native, Robert just began her first semester at KU. She is also executive director of Abolitionist Sanctuary, a “national faith-based coalition united against the moral crisis of mass incarceration and the criminalization of impoverished Black motherhood.” Her research focuses on ethics.
Robert continues to explore ways of replacing punishment in educational settings with something more effective and humane. Noting KU’s “rich legacy of racial integration in sports that coincides with an impactful history in the town of Lawrence and abolitionist movements,” she hopes to build a course, and possibly a conference, which connects the university with local community organizers in order to double-down on the commitment to building abolitionist sanctuaries in education.
“Punishment is just the easy way out. But to get to the root problem requires creativity. It requires community. How do we come together and think about solutions so that we can repair the harms, restore the relationships and rebuild a more just and equitable system where everyone can thrive?” she said.
“I don’t think prisons are fixable, but I hope schools are.”
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KU News Service
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Contact: Rick Hellman, KU News Service, 785-864-8852, [email protected], @RickHellman
Author seeks literature of a Latino heartland

LAWRENCE – When did Latinos start to imagine the Midwest as a possible homeland? When Tejano cowboys drove their cattle to market in early 20th century Kansas City? When bracero migrant workers arrived during World War II and continued coming in the postwar era?

Those are two possible answers postulated by Marta Caminero-Santangelo, University of Kansas Distinguished Professor of English, in her new article “Imagining a Latino Heartland: Migrant Placemaking, Corridos of the Midwest, and Tomás Rivera” in the journal MELUS (Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States).

“This article is part of a book project I’m working on called ‘Imagining a Latino Heartland,’” Caminero-Santangelo said. “In literary scholarship, there’s been almost no attention paid to Latino literature in the Midwest or about the Midwest. It creates the impression that there is no Latino literary cultural production in the Midwest and that Latinos themselves have not been here at all, or not for a long time.

“The idea was to find some early cultural production establishing Latino presence in the Midwest and giving some sense of how Latinos were imagining the so-called heartland, and whether they were building a relationship to it — even in imagination.”

Caminero-Santangelo turned to “The Harvest,” a posthumously published (1992) and lesser-known collection of writings by Rivera, whom she called “one of the forefathers of Chicano literature. His canonical text about migrant farmworkers is called ‘And the Earth Did Not Devour Him.’”

In an essay titled “The Great Plains as Refuge in Chicano Literature,” it was Rivera who turned to corridos — folk ballads — from an earlier era for inspiration.

Caminero-Santangelo examines two corridos — The “Corrido de Kiansis” and “Los reenganchados a Kansas” — for signs of any feelings of attachment the migrant workers might have for the place. She finds herself less convinced than Rivera.

“Rivera does a little bit of flip-flopping and hedging in general,” Caminero-Santangelo said. “He is trying to open up a space where the corridos imagined Kansas in a positive way because he’s trying in that essay to claim a tradition of Mexican American cultural production that actually was positive about the Great Plains. And when I looked at the corridos that Rivera looked at, I thought he was stretching it a bit, and that they were not nearly as positive as he laid out. So that’s my revisionism of Rivera.”

Caminero-Santangelo noted that by the time of his death in 1984, Rivera was imagining a Latino homeland in the Midwest.

“It was a rare instance of seeing a classic, very well-known early writer imagining the Midwest as a potential home,” she said. “Part of the book project is really playing with these terms, homeland and heartland, and when do writers start to think that the heartland can be a potential homeland, or even a place of the heart, a place where familial relations and communal relations are located … which gets to the bigger issue of placemaking.”

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KU News Service
1450 Jayhawk Blvd.
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Phone: 785-864-3256
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Distinguished professor’s lecture to address self-determination for people with disabilities
LAWRENCE — Karrie Shogren has dedicated the past two decades of her career to exploring barriers to supporting self-determination for people with disabilities. Shogren will present her inaugural distinguished professor lecture, “Advancing Self-Determination: Building Systems of Supports with the Disability Community,” at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 14 in the Kansas Room of the Kansas Union.

Center for East Asian Studies opens Year of Migration programming with speaker and film series
LAWRENCE — The Center for East Asian Studies’ (CEAS) 2023-2024 programming, which focuses on migration, kicks off with two Global Asia speakers and a film series. All CEAS events are free and open to the public.

Full stories below.

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Contact: Savannah Rattanavong, 785-864-6402, [email protected]
Distinguished professor’s lecture to address self-determination for people with disabilities

LAWRENCE — Research shows promoting autonomy leads to valued life outcomes, but for people with disabilities, barriers to supporting self-determination persist. Karrie Shogren, the Ross and Marianna Beach Distinguished Professor of Special Education in the KU School of Education & Human Sciences, has dedicated the past two decades of her career to exploring this topic.

Shogren will present her inaugural distinguished professor lecture, “Advancing Self-Determination: Building Systems of Supports with the Disability Community,” at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 14 in the Kansas Room of the Kansas Union.

Individuals can register to attend the event, which will have a reception to follow at 6:30 p.m.

The lecture will cover research that establishes definitional frameworks, assessments and evidence-based interventions that encourage self-determination to enhance school and community outcomes. The research also highlights partnerships with the disability community and the importance of creating support systems that allow people with disabilities to make their own choices and set goals for themselves.

“It is a privilege to have this opportunity to elevate and share work that has been driven by the disability community to change systems and practices to advance self-determination,” Shogren said.

Shogren’s research, which she has presented locally, nationally and internationally, focuses on assessment and intervention in self-determination and supported decision-making for people with disabilities. Her work has helped shape the direction of services and support for people with disabilities in schools and communities, as well as influenced research, theory and practice in related fields.

Currently serving as the director of the KU Center on Developmental Disabilities (KUCDD), Shogren also is the associate director of the Beach Center on Disability and a senior scientist at the Schiefelbusch Life Span Institute. She is a co-editor of the peer-reviewed academic journal Remedial and Special Education, as well as a fellow of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and American Psychological Association.

In addition, Shogren has contributed to several boards and committees related to advocacy and research with the disability community. She is an appointed member of the Standing Committee of Medical and Vocational Experts for the Social Security Administration’s Disability Programs under the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

Shogren has led multiple grant-funded projects, one of which recently received $250,000 from the Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Awards program. The project focuses on expanding opportunities for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to engage in research that affects them.

Shogren has published more than 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals and authored or co-authored more than 20 books. She joined KU’s Department of Special Education as an associate professor in 2013, though she served as an adjunct professor and research associate with the Beach Center in prior years. Shogren was previously a faculty member at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Texas at Austin.

She earned a doctorate in special education from KU, a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Dayton and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Ohio State University.

The first distinguished professorships were established at KU in 1958. A university distinguished professorship is awarded wholly based on merit, following exacting criteria. A complete list is available on the Distinguished Professor website.

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Contact: LaGretia Copp, 785-864-0307, [email protected]
Center for East Asian Studies opens Year of Migration programming with speaker and film series

LAWRENCE — The Center for East Asian Studies’ (CEAS) 2023-2024 programming, which focuses on migration, kicks off with two Global Asia speakers and a film series. All CEAS events are free and open to the public.

Global Asia speaker series

The speaker series features not only Asia specialists whose research and teaching focus on the region, but also others who deal with any elements of Asia broadly in a global context. The center hopes to engage more faculty and students across different disciplines and professional schools and to produce collectively a new and innovative analytical lens to rethink taken-for-granted assumptions about Asia.

1. “Passport Engagement”: 3:30-5 p.m. Sept. 7 at The Forum in Marvin Hall. Anthropologist Nicole Constable will discuss the problems with “real but fake” passports issued to migrant workers in Hong Kong.
2. “The Cats of Mirikitani” gallery talk: 1:30-3 p.m. Sept. 12 at the Lee Study Center in the Spencer Museum of Art. Documentary filmmaker Linda Hattendorf, KU art historian Maki Kaneko and Spencer curator Kris Ercums discuss artworks in the museum’s collection by Jimmy Mirikitani.

Migration film series

The migration film series is the Center for East Asian Studies’ second annual Asian film series. The four films will address diverse perspectives and issues on migration through the lens of Global Asia.

CEAS partnered with film directors, graduate students and family members of a Japanese war bride to moderate post-screening interdisciplinary discussions and share personal views and insights to foster energetic audience interactions.

1. “The Cats of Mirikitani”: 6-8:30 p.m. Sept. 12 at Room 211 in the Spencer Museum of Art (access through west doors only). Q&A led by Linda Hattendorf, documentary filmmaker.
2. “Minari”: 6-8:30 p.m. Sept. 13 at the English Room in the Kansas Union. Q&A led by Kyungmin Jung, graduate student in film & media studies.
3. “Carved in Silence”: 6-8 p.m. Sept. 14 at the English Room in the Kansas Union. Q&A led by Felicia Lowe, documentary filmmaker.
4. “War Brides of Japan”: 6-8 p.m. Sept. 15 at the English Room in the Kansas Union. Q&A led by Linda Steigerwald and Louise Lake, daughters of a Japanese war bride.

These events are part of the Center for East Asian Studies’ Title VI grant activities. The 2022-2026 grant uses the conceptual frame of Global Asia to address diverse perspectives on nationally and internationally pressing issues. This year’s theme, shared by all KU area studies centers, is migration. It will address various related issues and concerns through educational activities such as a movie series, speakers, workshops and a spring conference. The intent is to address social, political and cultural issues and concerns related to migration through a focus on Asian and Asian American experiences.

The importance of Asian migration cannot be overstated, said Akiko Takeyama, CEAS director.

“Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial and ethnic group in the U.S,” Takeyama said. “With our annual theme, migration, we will explore the flow of not only people and cultures, but also technologies, commodities and capital in today’s global age. Various topics regarding migration allow us to acknowledge creative connections and new sociality while critically engaging in the dialogues on geopolitical orders, structural inequalities and social injustices. I hope more people come to embrace different perspectives and respect one another.”

To achieve these goals, the Center created a migration steering committee consisting of CEAS-affiliated faculty Maki Kaneko (art history), Kwangok Song (curriculum & teaching), David Mai (film & media studies) and Ayako Mizumura (sociology). This interdisciplinary committee works collaboratively and shares ideas and insights on migration issues through their diverse perspectives. Mizumura said the goal of CEAS’s programming is to “generate dialogues and open-ended discussions on past and current Asian migrant experiences. In turn, these activities help create a supportive community at KU for learning about underrepresented Asian migrants — their histories, struggles, resilieces, cultures and experiences in the U.S.”

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KU News Service
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Study shows physical education teachers influence students’ attitudes about physical activity later in life
LAWRENCE — Research has long shown that as students get older, their physical activity level drops. Thus, high school can be the last chance to encourage students to be physically active and encourage a healthy lifestyle. A study from the University of Kansas shows that physical education teachers greatly influence students’ perception of the class and its purpose and also influence how likely they are to remain physically active later in life.

Solo exhibition offers portrait of an eco-anxious artist
LAWRENCE — Titled “I Will Destroy You,” a new solo exhibition includes the physically manipulated photos Lilly McElroy has installed to reflect the eco-anxiety and mortal dread the University of Kansas assistant teaching professor in the School of Architecture & Design has been experiencing. The exhibition runs Sept. 8 to Oct. 21 at Studios Inc. in Kansas City, Missouri.

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Contact: Mike Krings, 785-864-8860, [email protected]
Study shows physical education teachers influence students’ attitudes about physical activity later in life

LAWRENCE — Everyone who has gone through high school probably remembers gym class, for better or worse, and the influence their teachers had on the class environment.

A study from the University of Kansas shows that physical education teachers greatly influence students’ perception of the class and its purpose and also influence how likely they are to remain physically active later in life.

Research has long shown that as students get older, their physical activity level drops. Thus, high school can be the last chance to encourage students to be physically active and encourage a healthy lifestyle.

The current study found that physical education teachers greatly influence how students perceive the class, its purpose and that the teachers’ style influences whether they enjoy physical activity. Thus, teachers should focus on providing a positive, fun experience in PE classes instead of simply having students compete or complete rote physical tasks, students indicated.

“My thing is always, ‘Let’s ask the students.’ We should be shaping physical education around what they want and need, along with what we want to be teaching content-wise to our students,” said Ken Murfay, assistant teaching professor of health, sport & exercise science at KU and lead author of the study. “The more we can give PE meaning for students, the better it will be long-term. Students want it to be both fun and meaningful.”

Study authors conducted focus group interviews with 25 students entering high school. The school was chosen because its primary physical education teacher had a reputation as an effective educator and students entered the school via a lottery system, ensuring a diverse cross section of participants. The results showed the students understood the purpose of physical education was to provide them a time to be physically active and teach them ways they could continue to have activity throughout their lives.

To that theme, the students indicated they preferred a variety of activities to an overemphasis on certain sports or to simply understand the rules or scoring of a particular sport, such as basketball.

Students also indicated they felt PE should be a fun experience to be meaningful. Those who reported enjoying the class also indicated the class had purpose and taught them ways to be active. Those who had negative experiences reported the class was simply a way to take up an hour of their school day or that they were instructed to move with little guidance or had an overemphasis placed on competition.

Perhaps the most significant theme was that students reported the influence the teacher had on their experience. A teacher’s style and the experiences they designed and provided largely shaped how students viewed the class, the sport or activity they were taking part in and their attitudes toward activity itself.

“Definitely a noticeable effect if you have a strict hardcore gym teacher who’s like, ‘You have to do this perfectly.’ It’s going to make the gym experience less enjoyable, and then you’re going to probably not really try to stay as active because now you have a negative experience in that field,” one student said. “You’re like, ‘I don’t really feel like doing this anymore.’ And especially in gym class when you have to be there for an hour and it’s required. You have no way out of it. You have a teacher that’s just yelling at you all day, like commands and stuff. It definitely changes the experience entirely.”

Murfay and colleagues examine physical education through social cognitive theory. The theory holds that human thoughts and actions are based on personal, behavioral and environmental factors. PE as taught in school is an environmental factor that can influence personal factors like self-efficacy. Teachers’ social persuasion through words and actions can also influence student perceptions of physical education and activity, and the curriculum they choose to implement — whether only team sports or a variety of activities — can shape how students view physical activity throughout life.

The study, published in the journal European Physical Education Review, was co-written with Aaron Beighle, Heather Erwin and Erin Aiello of the University of Kentucky.

Previous research has shown perceptions of PE are mixed, with negative attitudes increasing with age. A better understanding of the role teachers play in those perceptions can both help improve the experience for students at a crucial time in their lives and educations as well as encourage teachers to use more effective approaches. Results showing students prefer a fun, positively motivating experience with a variety of activity options can help encourage better PE curriculum, Murfay said.

A former K-8 physical education teacher, he said the goal of his research is to continually improve physical education, as studies have shown physical activity has a wide range of benefits throughout life, both physical and mental. As physical education can often be overlooked or its importance not fully understood, illustrating the importance of good PE teachers as crucial.

“How a teacher frames physical education is very important in how the student interprets it,” he said. “The environment a teacher creates affects how they view activity and sport in general, and perceptions are influenced by experience. If they get a teacher who is passionate and lets students control their physical activity, it can make a big difference.”

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Solo exhibition offers portrait of an eco-anxious artist

LAWRENCE – It was 100 degrees the day Lilly McElroy started installing her solo exhibition at Studios Inc., a nonprofit arts organization in Kansas City, Missouri, where she has had a studio for the past three years. But in this exhibition space, the sun is felt mainly by its absence in the landscape photographs she will show there Sept. 8 to Oct. 21.

Titled “I Will Destroy You,” the exhibition includes the physically manipulated photos McElroy has installed to reflect the eco-anxiety and mortal dread the University of Kansas assistant teaching professor in the School of Architecture & Design has been experiencing.

McElroy, who calls herself a “lens-based artist,” has also included two video loops that show her hand reflecting the sun back to itself.

“These are some of the most traditional photographs I’ve made in a long time,” she said of the main group in the new show. “They are made by going out into the landscape and enacting the traditional role of the photographer with large-format, 4-by-5 camera on a tripod.”

Four-by-5 refers to the size of the film negative in inches.

“I photographed the sun either rising or setting using color negatives. And after I get the negatives processed, I use my fingernail to scratch away the delicate layers of emulsion that comprise the sun’s image. That’s what creates the absence.”

The result is that the eroded suns show up in McElroy’s prints as stark — even angry — red, yellow and/or black holes in otherwise full-color photos.

“It’s allowing me to make work that is very much about eco-anxiety and climate change,” she said. “So this is about impending doom. Not to be flippant, but that’s what I’m thinking about with this work — this idea of being in the world and acknowledging the fact that catastrophe is coming.”

McElroy used the word solastalgia to describe her feelings.

“It’s relatively new for me,” she said, “and I think it’s something a lot of people are moving into, or also having to contend with — these feelings of sadness and despair … and how do you move forward?”

McElroy also has work up at KU’s Spencer Museum of Art as part of their exhibition “Reading the World” that is from another series.

“That body of work is an ongoing project called ‘I Control The Sun’ in which I stick my hand out as if I am grasping the sun,” McElroy said. “It’s about trying to control something that you have no hope of controlling.

“These two bodies of work have allowed me to make beautiful images, something I enjoy. But so often with things that are beautiful, you can look at them and just move right past. However, with the ‘I Control The Sun’ series, even though the pictures are very pretty, that interruption of my hand forces you to reevaluate what’s happening. It doesn’t let you slide off the surface of the image. And in the same way, the physical interruptions that I’ve made on the negatives change your perception of what I would otherwise call very pretty landscapes.”

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