Grief and the Aftermath of Neighborhood Gun VIOLENCE

Brothers in Grief: The Hidden Toll of Gun Violence on Black Boys and Their Schools (University of Chicago Press, 2024) spotlights the neglected aftermath of neighborhood gun violence and its consequences for racial and educational equity. Drawing on two years of school observations, five years of social media observations, over 100 in-depth interviews with students and adults, and students’ school records at an all-boys, all-Black charter school in Philadelphia, I offer a three-stage analysis of the institutional management of grief in a school. I demonstrate that the school’s inability to fully recognize its students’ complex and long-lasting grief is reflective of larger misrecognitions of Black boys’ humanity and therefore the school system’s unpreparedness to wholly serve them. Brothers in Grief is the first school-based examination of grief’s long-term impacts for the secondary victims of urban gun violence, who are rarely accounted for in the quantification of gun violence devastation.

Publications resulting from this research:

• Gross, Nora. 2024. Brothers in Grief: The Hidden Toll of Gun Violence on Black Boys and Their Schools. The University of Chicago Press.

• Gross, Nora. 2025. "The Hidden Toll of Grief after Youth Gun Violence." Contexts 24(1): 34-39.

• Gross, Nora. 2022. “#LongLiveDaGuys: Online Grief, Solidarity, and Emotional Freedom for Black Teenage Boys after the Gun Deaths of Friends.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 52(2): 261-289.

• Clonan-Roy, Katherine, Nora Gross, and Charlotte Jacobs. 2021. “Safe Rebellious Places: The Value of Informal Spaces in Schools to Counter the Emotional Silencing of Youth of Color.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 34(4): 330-352.

• Gross, Nora and Cassandra Lo. 2018. “Relational Teaching and Learning After Loss: Evidence from Black Adolescent Male Students and Their Teachers.” School Psychology Quarterly 33(3): 381-389.

• Gross, Nora and Ina Kelleher. “Othersons and Othermothers: Evolving Kinship in Grief in the Aftermath of Youth Gun Violence.” Article in preparation.

Additionally, two films emerging from this project as well as resources for schools, parents, and youth can be found here. The project has recently been covered by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Billy Penn, Omnia, Penn Arts & Sciences Magazine, Penn GSE News, and The Pennsylvania Gazette.

Methodological Interventions for Inclusivity and Care

My co-edited methods text, Care-Based Methodologies: Reimagining Qualitative Research with Youth in U.S. Schools, offers concrete advice for conducting research, particularly with vulnerable populations, that centers transparency, reflexivity, reciprocity, curiosity, consent, and care.

Article/chapter-length publications about methods:

• Gross, Nora. “A ‘Friend’ or an ‘Experiment’?: The Paradox of Ethnographic Relationships with Youth.” In Care-Based Methodologies: Reimagining Qualitative Research with Youth in U.S. Schools (pgs. 133-145).

• Gross, Nora. “’I’m Like Tony Soprano and You’re My Therapist’: The Therapeutic Possibilities of Research Interviews with Adolescent Black Boys.” Article in preparation.

• Vasudevan, Veena, Nora Gross, and Pavithra Nagarajan. “Researching from Liminal Spaces: The Practice of Care in School-Based Ethnography with Youth of Color.” Article in preparation.

ADDITIONAL PUBLICATIONS

• Gross, Nora, Ellen Bryer, Charlotte Jacobs, and Jarvis Goosby. 2024. “’Heated, Polarized, and Annoying’: The Characteristics and Consequences of Affective Polarization in Elite Schools.” Democracy and Education 32(2), 1-11.

• Gross, Nora, Charlotte E. Jacobs, Rekha Marar & Adam Lewis. 2022. “‘This school is too diverse’: fragile feelings among white boys at elite independent schools.” Whiteness and Education 8(2), 193–211.

• Gross, Nora. 2022. “#LongLiveDaGuys: Online Grief, Solidarity, and Emotional Freedom for Black Teenage Boys after the Gun Deaths of Friends.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 52(2), 261-289.

• Clonan-Roy, Katherine, Nora Gross, and Charlotte Jacobs. 2021. “Safe Rebellious Places: The Value of Informal Spaces in Schools to Counter the Emotional Silencing of Youth of Color.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 34(4): 330-352.

• Gross, Nora. 2017. “#IfTheyGunnedMeDown: The Double Consciousness of Black Youth in Response to Oppressive Media.” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society 19(4): 416-437.

• Gross, Nora. “Nurturing Specialness, Defining Difference, and Cultivating Colorblindness in an Elite All-Boys Elementary Classroom.” Invited book chapter in Fergus, Edward and Joseph D. Nelson (eds.), Boys’ School and Community Life in the United States (Routledge). Forthcoming. [Pre-publication chapter available upon request]

research COLLABORATIONS