Autism and Classical Myth: Making classics better though autism and classical myth...

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.

Friday 23 April 2021

Making classics better though autism and classical myth...

When I last posted on this blog - right at the start of this month - the website for ACCLAIM, the network for anyone interested in autism and classical myth, was not long live. And it was growing, as was our new twitter account.

Snap shot of @AcclaimNetwork - with details
of Cora Beth Fraser's interview and my upcoming
contribution to "Making Classics Better"

The ACCLAIM website is continuing to grow, and I am so very pleased to share that I've been contacted by several people interested in the topic, including autistic academics and people with autistic relatives. One result of these contacts is that I shall be going - remotely - into a school's autism base later this summer term to do a session with their students!

A few more updates... Adam Soyler's interview with me is live! Here I talk about autism, mythology, why autism and mythology connect and why the activities I'm developing have taken a Herculean turn. Here's a screen shot of the start of the interview:

I've been struck that some of the things that Cora Beth Fraser says in her interview with Adam, also now up, fit my reflections...

One final thing: I shall be contributing to "Making Classics Better" next week (Weds 28th April) at a remote session at Reading University - as part of their summer series of papers by people seeking to find different and more inclusive ways of doing classics. Here's my title and abstract:

What Makes Classical Myth an Ideal Topic for Autistic Children?

Autistic people can have rich imaginative lives – contra one of the “myths” of autism, perpetuated not least because it can be hard for an autistic person to communicate feelings and desires. In this paper, Susan Deacy will set out how and why classical myth can “speak” to autistic children, and engage the imaginations of autistic children. She will focus especially on a set of lessons she is developing based on stories about Hercules – a figure who can exemplify particularly well what it can be like to negotiate the world as an autistic person – as part of the European Research Council-funded project Our Mythical Childhood and the ACCLAIM (Autism Connecting with Classically-Inspire Mythology) Network.