What Hercules did... at Lincoln, Nebraska - World Autism Awareness Week Day 7

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 1^st and 7^th 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 2^nd. 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…

Complete scene - without clothes, by Steve Simons

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.

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. 



Complete scene - with clothes, by Steve Simons

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.

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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And thanks to anyone who has read my postings this week! The week will be over soon, but autism never ends. 
Till later...