Dr William Michael Short
Status/discipline:
Classics and ancient history
Contact Details:
Past projects:
In my research to date, I have tried to develop two strands of this metaphor-based approach to Roman culture. The World through Roman Eyes, co-edited with Maurizio Bettini, showcases the “emic” approach I share with his school of Roman anthropology. With Embodiment in Latin Semantics, I introduced a body of scholarship that illustrates the pervasive role of embodied cognitive processes (especially image-schematic conceptualization) in Latin speakers’ meaning-making, from the level of word sense to that of literary thematics. Article-length publications have instead focused on the metaphorical structuring of individual concepts. For example, “Spatial Metaphors of Time in Roman Culture” (CW, 2016) demonstrated how Latin’s vertical and horizontal linear metaphors of time function as pervasive figurative themes that organize visual representation in spheres of Roman life as diverse as kinship practice, calendarmaking, funerary art, and urban monumentalization. “‘Transmission’ Accomplished?” (AJP, 2013) and “A Roman Folk Model of the Mind” (Arethusa, 2012) showed how systems of metaphor work together to produce mental models for conceptualizing and reasoning about communication and the mind.
