Autism and Classical Myth: Chasing mythical beasts and other recent activites

Why classical myth and autism?

Why classical myth and autism?

The idea for this project started to take shape at a meeting in 2008 with a special needs teacher, who mentioned that, in her experience and those of her colleagues, autistic children often enjoy classical myth. I began to wonder why this might be the case, and whether – as a classicist who researches, and loves, classical myth – there was anything I could contribute. I started this blog to report on my progress which was often sporadic until the launch of the Warsaw-based European Research Council-funded project Our Mythical Childhood (2016-22) to trace the role of classics in children’s culture.

My key contribution to the project is an exploration of classics in autistic children’s culture, above all by producing myth-themed activities for autistic children. This blog shares my progress, often along Herculean paths, including to a book of lessons for autistic children focusing on the Choice of Hercules between two very different paths in life. The image above, illustrating the homepage of this blog, is one of the drawings by Steve K. Simons, the book's illustrator, of a chimneypiece panel in a neoclassical villa at Roehampton in South West London. The lessons centre on this panel.

Wednesday 19 November 2014

Chasing mythical beasts and other recent activites

Here's a quick report on current and future activities that bear on this blog's topic.

First: I'm looking forward to the opportunity to speak on my still-emerging mythology and autism project in Warsaw in 2016 at a conference organised by the wonderful Katarzyna Marciniak of the Chasing Mythological Beasts project. The image accompanying this post, from a painting by Matylda Tracewska comes courtesy of the project site.

Second: I'm currently writing a toolkit for Classics practitioners for the Higher Education Academy's Embedding Equality and Diversity in the Curriculum project.

Third: I've begun the process pulling together my blogs by setting up a single site which is still very much in progress: http://end-of-classics.weebly.com/