William Grant Wical

This project examines how the institutional practices of two hospital-based violence intervention programs (HVIPs) in the state of Maryland shape experiences of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for young Black men who have survived a gunshot wound. Despite increasingly high levels of gun violence in some urban contexts, there is little known about the subjective experiences of survivors. By focusing on the embodied affective and somatic features of their emotions, this research seeks to understand how bodily expressions are interpreted and given meaning through social interactions in contexts of psychosocial caregiving, thereby altering available coping strategies. The emphasis on the bodily experience of emotions offers a critically important lens to understand how participation in co-constructed caregiving practices simultaneously alters experiences of discomfort, negotiates unwanted changes to personal identity, and reproduces notions of appropriate ways of being. This research develops an under-theorized aspect of the social suffering framework by examining how active engagement in caregiving practices influences subjective experiences of discomfort and illness. In order to do so, this study will utilize long-term ethnographic research methods and validated quantitative measures of PTSD to incorporate the perspectives of survivors, members of their social network, and HVIP staff members.