Autism and Classical Myth: Awarded Top 30 Mythology Blog & who reads this blog?

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, 9 May 2018

Awarded Top 30 Mythology Blog & who reads this blog?

I’ll be off soon to Warsaw – for a new phase in my autism and mythology project. This is because I shall be presenting on my work to date for the project and giving participants a chance to try out some of the activities that I have devised around the Choice of Hercules (see earlier postings to this blog – notably those from Feb 2018). Preparing for this session has got me reflecting on the blog, including what I’ve posted over these past few years, and also on who the readers might be. I look from time to time at the stats for the blog, including to get a sense of where, in the world, readers are based. Here are the details of the pageviews by countries since the stats begin. The figures are for May 2010 onwards, so they don’t cover the first year or so. They cover the period until today, Wednesday 9 May 2018 at 11.30 BST. Most visits in terms of pageviews are from the following ten countries:

Pageviews by country: May 2010-May 2018

1. US

2. UK

3. Russia

4. France

5. Germany

6. Poland

7. South Korea

8. Ukraine

9. China

10. Canada

Turning to the pageviews by countries for this current month, the US remains at the top though with the UK just one view behind and with two other countries, Czechia and Australia now in the top 10:

1. US

2. UK

3. Poland

4. France

5. Germany

6. Czechia

7. Canada

8. Russia

9. Australia

10. China

And – the figures for this week show the countries as follows, with Italy and Belgium now appearing:

1. US

2. Italy

3. Russia

4. UK

5. Poland

6. China

7. Ukraine

8. Australia

9. Belgium

10. Germany

I would love to know how the blog is being received in different localities – where there might be different ways of looking at autism for instance, and for that matter at mythology. Also, and this is something that might open up the blog to further new readers, I recently received a notification a content reader called Feedspot. This was to inform me that in an entry on their blog listing their Top 30 Mythology Blogs my blog has been included.

So – I shall keep going with the blog, because of what its topic means to me and also because it helps to know that presenting the work I’m doing via a blog is reaching people. My session at Warsaw – a week today – is good to go. I’ll report in future postings on the session and any feedback from the participants.