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.

Saturday 6 April 2019

What would Hercules do? Today in Lincoln, Nebraska - World Autism Awareness Week Day 6

For this penultimate posting for World Autism Awareness Week, I'm going to mention something that I'll be participating in today - but at which I won't, sadly, be present in person. I'm part of a learning differences panel at the 2019 CAMWS Conference in Lincoln, Nebraska - contributing a paper on my autism and myth project, particularly the Choice of Hercules activities. It's going to be read by Amy Pistone - and I'd like to thank Amy for taking this on. And in case anyone attending the session sees this posting, let me say 'hello' and 'thank you': do send me any comments. I understand that there might be live tweeting via #CAMWS2019. Here's one of the handouts for the session:
Choice of Hercules - with clothes, by Steve Simons
 Tomorrow I'll conclude this week of postings by putting up a text of the paper.

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1 comment:

Susan Deacy said...

One further thing - the link to my abstract via the CAMWS website is here: https://camws.org/sites/default/files/meeting2019/Panels/Disabilities03.pdf

8 April 2019 at 09:04

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