Dr. Power-Greene completed his B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Before arriving at Clark in 2007, he taught courses at the University of Connecticut-Storrs, Hampshire College, and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

A specialist in African American social and political movements, Professor Power-Greene teaches courses for undergraduates and graduate students on American history with a focus on African American internationalism and comparative social and political movements. His book, Against Wind and Tide: The African American Struggle against the Colonization Movement (NYU Press 2014), examines black Americans efforts to agitate for equal rights in the North and Midwest in the face the American Colonization Society’s colonization movement, which hoped to compel free blacks to leave the United States for Liberia. His current research projects include a study of Hubert Harrison and the New Negro movement, an examination of white northern colonizationists, and an exploration of African American emigration movements during the nineteenth century.

Ousmane K. Power-Greene's debut novel, The Confessions of Matthew Strong, was reviewed in the New York Times and featured on NPR's 'Books We Love'. In his incendiary story about race, redemption, the dangerous imbalances that continue to destabilize society, Power-Greene, as Paul Beatty says, 'shreds the pretense that America’s murderous history is a ‘whodunit’ and not a ‘wedunit’.