William Short
Classics Department Faculty

Office Information
HU 323
(410) 617-5681
WMShort@loyola.edu

Biography
William Michael Short received his B.A. in Classics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1999) and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (2007). He is a Fulbright Fellow and a Fellow of the Center for Anthropology of the Ancient World in Siena, Italy, where he conducted research for his doctoral dissertation, entitled “Sermo, Sanguis, Semen: An Anthropology of Language in Roman Culture”. This study, combining approaches of both classical studies and cultural anthropology, explores the meaning of two key Roman cultural terms, patrius sermo and purus sermo, arguing that they reflect a conceptual elision of sermo and sanguis/semen based upon perceived functional correspondences between language and blood in the formation and mediation of identity.

In addition to his research concentration in the fields of Latin language and literature (especially of the Republican period), linguistic and cultural anthropology, and rhetoric and stylistics, Mr. Short is also interested in language pedagogy, particularly in how language communicates meaning within contexts, and how context itself—both literary and cultural—contributes to linguistic comprehension. At Berkeley, Dr. Short has taught Classical Mythology and numerous courses in Latin, including the Latin Workshop, of which he was twice the Director (2004 and 2005). He was granted an Instructional Research Fellow by the Berkeley Language Center to explore the applicability of the communicative model to the teaching of Latin (2003), and has been recognized for excellence in teaching.