Xavier Faculty Spotlight: Dr. Gabriel Green

March 13, 2023

By Zamariah Strozier, Staff Writer

He is a jack of all trades. He writes poetry, sings, and published a chapbook. He talks about the success of African Americans in students’ assigned novels. He speaks with passion about his career. He enjoys seafood such as oysters, shrimp and grits, and crawfish. And he is a new Xavier faculty member in the English Department.

“I see myself as someone who always has more to learn. If my 20-plus years of schooling has taught me anything, it’s that there’s still so much I don’t know and so much that I’d love to learn and understand,” said Dr. Gabriel Green, an assistant professor of African American Literature in the English department at Xavier. “To me, a wise person is someone who knows their limitations and works towards making it their strength,” Green added.

Dr. Gabriel Green was born and raised in Pontiac, Mich. where he earned his undergraduate degree at Eastern Michigan University, and his graduate degree at Penn State University with a dual-title Ph.D. in English and African American/African Diaspora Studies, specifically in Rhetoric and Composition and African American Rhetoric. He is also a poet, a musical lyrist and singer, a community volunteer, and the author of “The Magical Negro Reveals His Secrets” chapbook published in 2019 which received an award for winning the C&R Press’ Winter Soup Bowl Competition. He also produced an EP titled “Kairos” in the summer of 2020 under his artist name: Brother Gabe that listeners can stream on Apple Music and Spotify.

“Music has been a part of my family, so I come from a very musical family. Everybody in my family plays some kind of instrument or form of fashion,” Green said. “So, I originally started off basically playing the bass guitar in church.”

Green said it was both the music and culture of New Orleans and the Black community in the city and Xavier that lured him here.

“I think it’s good to have another Black male professor to mentor young Black men on campus,” said Dr. Jennifer Morrison, an assistant professor in the English Department at Xavier, who is a Dillard University alumna and the current vice president for the Louisiana Folklore Society.

Green is relatable to a large portion of the student body that is also from the Midwest, Morrison said. But he is also a role model for young Black men on campus, who get to see a Black male Ph.D. in the classroom and who can serve as a mentor, Morrison added.

“He is not your average English professor,” said Taylor Marshall, a class of 2026 neuroscience major on the pre-medicine track, who is a member of the Chemistry Club and Biomedical Honor Core, and an athlete for the intramural volleyball team at Xavier.

“Dr. Green is really good about relating everything that we read to current day times and what is going on in our lives, so we feel more connected to the material. And it feels more personal, so I think he is more, one of the better English teachers that I’ve had for sure,” Marshall said.

Marshall shared that Green’s English classes go beyond just the regular lectures. She appreciates how Green allows her and her peers to talk openly about their thoughts, opinions, and perspectives in circle discussions at the start of every class.

“If I can change somebody’s idea in terms of how they approach the whole idea of reading something or the whole idea of writing something, then that means that I have done my job,” Green said.