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Donna A. Gessell
Professor Emerita of English · University of North Georgia
Scholar, teacher, Peace Corps Volunteer, and writer — sharing a life spent in pursuit of language, literature, and the places books can take you.
A Life Shaped by Words
Donna A. Gessell is Professor Emerita of English at the University of North Georgia, where she spent more than three decades teaching literature, linguistics, and the art of writing. She holds a doctorate in English Literature from Case Western Reserve University and served as Director of Graduate Studies at UNG.
Her academic passions are wide-ranging and deeply held — from the epic poetry of John Milton to the grammar of everyday speech, from the rhetoric of sacred texts to the vision of peace across Eastern and Western cultures. Students who took her courses often describe her as the professor who gave them a genuine love for literature they never expected to find.
Before her academic career took shape, Donna served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Fiji from 1979 to 1982, living and working in the remote mountain village of Naqelewai and training women community leaders across the Pacific. That experience — and the primary school library she helped build there — became the defining story of her life outside the classroom.
Milton & Renaissance Literature
For decades, Donna introduced students to John Milton’s epic vision — and many left her class with a love for Paradise Lost they never saw coming.
Peace Corps · Fiji
Three years in Naqelewai, working across five villages. Her essay Living by the Book has reached strangers around the world and was featured on PeaceCorps.gov.
Linguistics & Grammar
From Standard English Grammar to Applied Linguistics at the graduate level — she made a notoriously difficult subject feel human and accessible.
Literature of Peace
Her signature course, Peace in Global Cultures, wove together Eastern and Western visions of peace through literature, philosophy, and lived experience.
Courses Taught at UNG
— Donna Gessell, on her essay Living by the Book“Of all the academic work I’ve done, this piece — which is somewhat nonacademic — has been what’s gotten the most notice. I get emails all the time from total strangers.”
From the Page
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Curriculum Vitae
Four Decades in Letters
Teaching, scholarship, service, and community — a full accounting of a life’s work in language and literature.
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