Nora Gross

Nora Gross is a sociologist of youth and education, emotion, and inequality as well as a documentary filmmaker. Her research explores the intersections of race, gender, class, and emotion for youth in school and community contexts and asks how young people develop and protect their inner lives and ideas about the future in the face of considerable (and rapidly changing) external constraints. She uses primarily ethnographic and qualitative methods as well as surveys, film, participatory and action research.

Gross has published on issues related to racialized masculinity for both Black and white boys, grief and loss, political polarization in schools, teens’ social media use, youth resistance and emotional solidarity, and school supports for vulnerable youth. She has also produced several documentary films focusing on the lives of Black boys and men and co-edited the methods textbook, Care-Based Methodologies: Reimagining Qualitative Research with Youth in US Schools (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022).

Her recent award-winning book, Brothers in Grief: The Hidden Toll of Gun Violence on Black Boys and Their Schools (University of Chicago Press, 2024), draws on two years of school-based ethnography and more than five years of digital ethnography to examine the often-unrecognized secondary impacts of neighborhood gun violence and the complex emotional lives of Black teenage boys. Set at an ambitious urban high school for boys during the heartbreaking year following the shooting death of a popular student, the book chronicles the consequences of loss and hidden grief for Black boys and on a school community struggling to recover and balance its educational mission with its care for a vulnerable student body. The book has been honored with best book awards from three different sections of the American Sociological Association -- Sociology of Education (2025 winner), Sociology of Emotion (2026 winner), Sociology of Children and Youth (2026 honorable mention) -- as well as a best book award from the Society for Professors of Education (2025) and the Educational Problems Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (2025). Additionally, Brothers in Grief was a 2024 finalist for the C. Wright Mills Book award.

At Barnard, Gross teaches courses on the foundations of education, youth constraint and resistance, and research methods in education. Before coming to Barnard, she was a Core Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boston College. 

PhD Sociology and Education (dual degree). University of Pennsylvania. 2020.

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

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

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. (link)

Gross, Nora. 2023. “#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. (link)

Gross, Nora, Charlotte Jacobs, Rekha Marar, and Adam Lewis. 2023. “’This School is Too Diverse’: Fragile Feelings Among White Boys at Elite Independent Schools.” Whiteness and Education 8(2): 193-211. (link)

Vasudevan, Veena, Nora Gross, Pavithra Nagarajan, and Katherine Clonan-Roy. 2022. Care-Based Methodologies: Reimagining Qualitative Research with Youth in U.S. Schools. BloomsburyAcademic Press. (link)

Gross, Nora. 2022. “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). (link)

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. (link)

Gross, Nora, producer. 2020. “Our Philadelphia.” Documentary film (short). (link)

Gross, Nora, producer and director. 2020. “Club With No Name.” Documentary film (short). (link)

Gross, Nora and Cassandra Lo. 2018. “Relational Teaching and Learning After Loss: Evidence from Black Adolescent Male Students and Their Teachers.” School Psychology 33(3) - Special Section: Grief and Loss in Children and Adolescents : 381-389. (link)

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. (link)

Curriculum Vitae