BY OLIVIA ROSS, STAFF WRITER
It can be hard to imagine professors as anything more than professors. For many instructors, teaching is just a part of the amazing work they do.
Most professors do some kind of research outside of teaching. Dr. Kyle Barnett, a communication professor, studies edible sound. Psychology professor Dr. Jean Lamont studies the effects of body shame on immune systems. Drs. Amanda Krzysiak and Francis Barrios, both chemistry professors, seek ways to kill cancer. This research is all happening right within the walls at Bellarmine University.
Barnett takes a great interest in sound. Not just any kind of sound, though: the kind you can eat. Yes, he studies music you can eat.
Barnett is revising a book for the University of Michigan Press called “Sound Business,” which is about the early record industry. This book is about how record companies in the past organized the foundational genres of music.
“I was posting images on Facebook I was finding of phonograph records as edible content,” Barnett said.
After seeing an advertisement with Carrie Brownstein of the band Sleater-Kinney eating a record out of its box, he was hooked.
“The literal or metaphorical examples of people eating records I thought was an interesting way to think about consumerism, consumption and collecting,” Barnett said.
Now, Barnett and Shawn Vancour, Barnett’s research partner who works at UCLA, are constantly being sent old commercials and TV shows of people eating music. For example, during the early 1960s in England, The Beatles had edible–but not playable–licorice records. To him, it is a way to think about consumption. Barnett said he hopes to continue researching the way that film, culture and recorded sound culture are linked throughout history.
It gives him a chance to rotate the things that he loves.
“I love teaching, but by the end of the year I’m a little burnt out, and I go back to research,” Barnett said.
Lamont is researching the effects of body image issues on the immune system. When women don’t meet the body ideals presented to them in the media, Lamont found they experience shame about their bodies.
“The thing about shame is that you feel like you are not meeting these ideals because of something about you,” Lamont said. “So as you can imagine, there are some really nasty health outcomes that can be associated with that.”
Her research looks at how those outcomes affect the immune system and how body shame can predict health outcomes throughout the semester.
“Folks who have higher body shame at the beginning of the semester are going to end up getting sick later in the semester,” Lamont said.
She has found that this is because when people feel ashamed of their bodies, it’s easier for them to neglect what is happening to them internally. Lamont’s next step is to understand this effect on a physiological level.
“If you are suppressing things in your body, you might not value your body as much,” Lamont said.
Krzysiak and Barrios are researching ways to kill cancer cells. Their backgrounds in biochemistry and organic chemistry help them to find less damaging ways to cure and kill cancerous cells. Their focus is on lung, pancreatic and ovarian cancers.
Barrios began his journey to his research when he was very young. He recalls getting a headache as a child, taking medicine and wondering how the medicine chemically made his headache disappear. As a chemist, he studies the effects of medical chemical interactions. His team in the lab executes synthesis, and then Krzysiak’s team looks at the biological data.
Krzysiak has a master’s degree in marine science, and since she was 12, she had wanted to study that. Krzysiak realized after getting her Master’s and working in natural products chemistry that she was much more interested in the biochemistry side of natural sciences.
Their end goal is “to create chemical molecules that have drug-like behavior,” Krzysiak said. When treatments like chemotherapy are used to eradicate cancer cells, they aren’t selective and kill all cells, creating a demand for “less toxic” cancer therapies.