Today it's the final day of World Autism Awareness Week - and here's my longest paper for the week. It's the text of my paper I mentioned in yesterday's posting - from the Learning Disabilities panel from the CAMWS annual conference in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Good afternoon! Let me begin by saying how sorry I am not to be presenting in person. It means a lot to be part of this panel, including because, since I began working on the topic of this paper, around a decade ago, I have benefitted from the support of US-based classicists and autism specialists – and indeed from classicists with academic and personal interests in autism. Also, it is work that’s been done in the US that has helped shape my project. One example I’d pull out is Steve Silberman’s Neurotribes. Another is Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism by Ron Suskind. This book helped inspire the ‘Herculean’ focus for the project - thanks to the experience Suskind relates concerning the part the Disney Hercules film played in opening up a ‘portal’ between himself and his autistic son.
The scheduling of this paper is, also, timely. We’re currently World Autism Awareness Week which runs, this year, between 1st and 7th April. It might be that some, likely even all you, might wonder what I mean by an autism ‘Week’ – as opposed to World Autism Day, which is an established international event held on each April 2nd. This could be because, although ‘World’ is the title I am pretty sure that the ‘Week’ is an initiative based in the UK, run by the National Autistic Society. It feels right, and timely, to be engaging with a UK initiative, and one that, while growing out of the UK (if I’m right…!) is looking beyond Britain.
For about a decade
now, I’ve been interested in the potential for classical myth for autistic
children. The interest started when I heard from a special needs teacher in the
UK that, in her experience and those of her colleagues, autistic children often
engage with studying classical myth. From this anecdotal evidence, I
began to wonder why this was the case, and whether, as someone especially
interested in myth as an academic, there was anything I could do here by way of
creating resources. As a result, I reached out to as many people as I could
think of including dramatherapists and special needs teachers. And I kept getting encouraging
responses. The result was something that has transformed various aspects of my
practice, including taking on a role that I wouldn’t have thought to put myself
up for previously, of departmental disability coordinator. And I started
blogging on the topic. For a while the blog broadened
into a disability blog more broadly, until I teamed up with a project based in
Warsaw, the goal of which is to trace the role of classics in children’s and
Young Adult culture. So, my own contribution here is in where classical myth
sits in autistic children’s culture. The
Warsaw-based project is a 5-year project which is currently half way though.
For its autism ‘wing’ I am producing three sets of activities for autistic
children I completed the first set of activities just over a year ago, although
I will, likely, refine this and I welcome any feedback.
The European Research Council, which funds this project, encourages – even expects – immediate dissemination. I have always found that my research and writing process lends itself to presenting my work-in-progress and to reflecting on the while research process. In the blog, I shared my increasingly deepening engagement with autism and on why Hercules was a figure I had opted for as one especially suitable for a set of activities. These reasons include the potential for Hercules to ‘speak’ to some of the challenges that autistic children encounter as the hero who repeatedly experiences hardships and who is ever needing to learn all over again how to respond to what life throws at him.
Good afternoon! Let me begin by saying how sorry I am not to be presenting in person. It means a lot to be part of this panel, including because, since I began working on the topic of this paper, around a decade ago, I have benefitted from the support of US-based classicists and autism specialists – and indeed from classicists with academic and personal interests in autism. Also, it is work that’s been done in the US that has helped shape my project. One example I’d pull out is Steve Silberman’s Neurotribes. Another is Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism by Ron Suskind. This book helped inspire the ‘Herculean’ focus for the project - thanks to the experience Suskind relates concerning the part the Disney Hercules film played in opening up a ‘portal’ between himself and his autistic son.
The scheduling of this paper is, also, timely. We’re currently World Autism Awareness Week which runs, this year, between 1st and 7th April. It might be that some, likely even all you, might wonder what I mean by an autism ‘Week’ – as opposed to World Autism Day, which is an established international event held on each April 2nd. This could be because, although ‘World’ is the title I am pretty sure that the ‘Week’ is an initiative based in the UK, run by the National Autistic Society. It feels right, and timely, to be engaging with a UK initiative, and one that, while growing out of the UK (if I’m right…!) is looking beyond Britain.
Another thing
I’d like to say by way of introduction is this – you should have two handouts [illustrated below] in front of you. While you
listen to what follows, by all means colour it in – and why I’m suggesting that
you do this should become clear soon…
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| Complete scene - without clothes, by Steve Simons |
The European Research Council, which funds this project, encourages – even expects – immediate dissemination. I have always found that my research and writing process lends itself to presenting my work-in-progress and to reflecting on the while research process. In the blog, I shared my increasingly deepening engagement with autism and on why Hercules was a figure I had opted for as one especially suitable for a set of activities. These reasons include the potential for Hercules to ‘speak’ to some of the challenges that autistic children encounter as the hero who repeatedly experiences hardships and who is ever needing to learn all over again how to respond to what life throws at him.
I would be
honoured if you would visit the blog (as it is, I get significantly more ‘hits’
from the US than anywhere else).
I decided on
the scene you have in front of you as the focus for the first set of activities.
When I first drafted the activity, I produced a very provisional line-drawing
of the scene and various sections of it. It has recently been drawn properly,
by an artist, Steve Simons, whose work is on the handout. The activities
concern Hercules when, on reaching a strange place, he is tasked with making a
choice between what is on one side of the landscape and what’s on the other
side.
On one side –
perhaps the one you’re colouring in? – the landscape includes rocks, a helmet,
a snake and a female – either a woman, goddess or personification – holding a
sword and pointing up a steep and craggy path. On the other
side, in contrast, there is abundant foliage, drinking vessels and fruit that
is so plentiful that the basket it is containing is overflowing. Here there is
another female personage, with a breast exposed – though only on one of the
versions of the handout – Steve has produced a clothed version too because, as
I understand it, some autistic people find it difficult to look at pictures of
nudity. As for
Hercules, he is in the process of making a choice – or he is caught in indecision
– with his body turned towards one woman and his face towards the other one.
And thanks to anyone who has read my postings this week! The week will be over soon, but autism never ends.
Till later...
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| Complete scene - with clothes, by Steve Simons |
The artefact on
which the drawing is based in an 18th-century chimneypiece panel in Grove House, Roehampton – from a time when
the female personages were not just named via the ancient terms of Virtue and
Vice. ‘Virtue’ could also be conceived of as ‘Hard Work’ or ‘Industriousness.’ ‘Vice’
could personify ‘Pleasure’ or ’Indolence’.
The activities
are seeking to help autistic children deal with some of the challenges they
might encounter, including how to read body language or facial expressions, how
to understand how the present can turn into the future, and how to deal with
changes in routine. However, with the activities, I am not only aiming to engage
with to the various hardships that autistic people face. I am also concerned
with responding to a distinctive autistic way of thinking and behaving – where
people are not just helped to deal with a world where non-autistics dominate,
but where there is space to be autistic. This is in line with
the move away from the model of disabled people as those who need to change to
fit in with society, to a notion that it is society that does
the disabling.
With this in mind, I want to
share one thing that came out of a session I ran in October 2018 with a group
of UK-based autism experts. One thing that they asked was ‘Why
classics?’. Another was ‘Why classical myth?’ A third was ‘Why
Hercules?’, beyond that it is something that I myself enthuse about. Would
other sets of stories do just as well, they asked, for example Winnie the Pooh?
These questions bothered me. There
is a tendency among classicists to see classics as some kind of gift that we
give to ‘the public’, including children, to make them better citizens, as
though classics is a privileged space that ‘we’ open up to others. I don’t want to perpetuate such a
view of classics. It is more that I have seen time and gain that when people
experience classics it ‘speaks’ to them… This was my first encounter with
classics – after I was given Roger Lancelyn Green’s Tales of the Greek
Heroes.
A response I gave at the time was
this. Focusing on the ‘Why Hercules?’
question, I set out how I think Hercules bears on the resources. I described
Hercules as one who is at home in the wilds – his own space – where he is
capable of things that others cannot manage. He needs to learn the rules of
each new scenario he experiences. Each time he needs to find a new way to deal
with a fresh situation. In the wild, he invariably manages to overcome
obstacles. Then, when he gets to civilisation, something goes wrong, often
terribly wrong.
One of the participants was an
autistic academic who is part of a network promoting the participation of autistic
people in autism research. He said: ‘that sounds like being autistic.’ He said that what always
interested him was fantasy, and Westerns, particularly outsiders and outlaws.
He liked how Hercules could count both as a hero – the greatest of heroes no
less – and as an outsider. What he said marked a turning
point for me - where I felt stronger in my thinking that the project
was a promising one, and that Hercules was a promising topic for activities for
autistic children.
I have trialled
the activities so far with a group of children, aged 7-11, at the autism unit
of a primary school in London. I have also
tried it out in class with undergraduate students on a classical myth module I
convene – as a means to think about some the potential for taking classical
myth to new audiences.And I’ve tried
it out with some groups of academics including now yourselves! One reason for
the colouring in is to encourage those doing the activities – right now some of
you hopefully! – to look closely at the scene. And the activities will include
an opportunity to think about the colours to pick for each side of the scene –
for example, perhaps, bright colours for the foliage and flowers and duller
colours for the rocky landscape.
I would be happy
to say more about the project with anyone who would like to contact me – and I’ll be delighted if
you were to send me a photo of your colouring in.
In place of a
question session, perhaps you would write comments or questions on the piece of
paper being circulated (?). Add an asterisk if you’re okay with me adding what
you write to the guestbook which I usually
bring to a session and which includes writings – and drawings – which have helped inform my progress.
Thank you for
listening to my words.
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