Autism and Classical Myth: What's happened thanks to a Public Engagement grant from the Institute of Classical Studies

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.

Tuesday 14 May 2019

What's happened thanks to a Public Engagement grant from the Institute of Classical Studies

Every time that I speak about my autism and myth project, it moves on in some way. Sometimes this is because of comments from people who hear me talk about what I’m doing. Sometimes it comes out of articulating my thoughts in line with a specific event. Back in October 2018, I ran an event at which has led me to revisit what I am doing, and why I am doing it. This was an event, ‘Autism and Classical Mythology: Workshop for External Partners,’ where a group of specialists on autism met to discuss the first draft I had put together of activities around the Choice of Hercules.

The event took place thanks to support from the Institute of Classical Studies’s Public Engagement Fund. It took me a while to write a report on the event – partly because I needed a bit of time to reflect on what took place, and process it all. I finally wrote it the other week. I did it in the form of a posting for the ICS’s blog. It was Emma Bridges, the Public Engagement Fellow at the ICS who invited me to do this – in place of a formal report. And would that all reports could be in the form of blog postings…

The posting was published a few days ago – and it is my pleasure to share it HERE blog-to-blog.