Alumni Spotlight: Thomas Ronan

Thomas Ronan graduated from the College of Arts and Sciences in May of 2023 with a B.A. in Italian and Global Medieval Studies. Thomas’s course of studies at GU focused on medieval literature and especially on Dante’s Comedy. Among his favorite Global Medieval Studies classes at Georgetown were Prof. Jo Ann Moran Cruz’s “History and Legend in Medieval Britain,” Prof. Tarmo Toom’s “Augustine’s Confessions,” and the late Prof. John Hirsh’s “Chaucer and the 14th Century.” His junior fall, Thomas studied Dante with expert Giuseppe Ledda at the University of Bologna, the poet’s alma mater. His senior year, under Prof. Sarah McNamer’s supervision, Thomas wrote his paper for his Capstone Project in Global Medieval Studies on Chaucer’s “Merchant’s Tale,” arguing by comparing Chaucer’s version of the “Pear Tree Episode” to earlier renditions in Arabic, Persian, and Italian, that “The Merchant’s Tale” presents a deliberate criticism of husbands’ mistreatment of wives. Thomas’s Senior Honors Thesis in Italian, an Italian-language essay written under Prof. Francesco Ciabattoni’s supervision, explored the original question of Dante’s reason for including peculiar similarities between Cato and Matelda, two characters in Purgatory.

Over his time at Georgetown, Thomas also worked as a research assistant to Prof. Moran Cruz and traveled a second time to Italy as a Global Medieval Studies Research/Travel Award Researcher. A student of Japanese and an admirer of Japanese culture, after leaving the Hilltop, Thomas taught English at Totsukawa Junior and Senior High Schools in Nara, Japan, for a year as a Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program Assistant Language Teacher. Now, he works as a Legal Fellow at The Works, Inc., a nonprofit in his hometown, Memphis, Tennessee, where he supports staff attorneys’ property- and housing-focused community development efforts. This fall, Thomas will begin his J.D. program at Harvard Law School.