William Wical

University of Maryland, College Park

William’s research examines the emotional experiences of Black men who survived a gunshot wound and received services from a hospital-based violence intervention program. This work reorients the study of gun violence toward centering the social significance of whiteness and anti-Blackness in their historical and contemporary forms. In departing from typical starting points for scholarship on gun violence, William’s work contextualizes experiences and interpretations of trauma in the socio-historical milieus in which they occur. In doing so, it offers new ways of evaluating what methods of intervention are best able to achieve health equity and social transformation. In underscoring the political significance of those aspects of life which are not frequently registered within discourses of resistance and agency—including emotional experiences—his work contributes to abolitionist scholarship and efforts to achieve racial justice.

 

Research Interests: Emotional experience; Trauma; Gun violence