Acclaiming autism and mythology in children's education on 24 May - along with Hercules from Roehampton and London newly imagined...

It is my pleasure to share information - now with graphic! - of the ACCLAIM (Autism Connecting CLAssically-Inspired Mythology) Network event a week today, on Monday 24 May. The full poster is here along with a link to a pdf version. All very welcome - please share with anyone who might be interested!

Why I'm planning to animate the Higher Education and autistic classrooms guided by Panoply

I didn't plan to blog today, but I've been inspired to by a session on animating ancient vases this morning with Sonya Nevin! 

This was the session I mentioned previously, when I blogged last week. It's the second of two sessions where the Myths and Mythology class I'm currently teaching at Roehampton joined the weekly Our Mythical Childhood seminar in Warsaw.

Vase animation-linked activities in action, from the
 Panoply vase animation pages on the
Our Mythical Childhood website here
 

What Sonya showed was just how far an animations approach to ancient vases can open up new ways to look at ancient art, myth and at contemporary people's own relationships with that material.

It is possible, as Sonya set out, to explore different perspectives on vases, to think in fresh ways about what people think they know or see - and the there is potential too for using vases in activities beyond the Higher Education classroom, for example with children and with displaced people.

Further examples of Panoply-inspired creativity
 - also from the Our Mythical Childhood website here

Sonya showed two of the animations she has created with Steve Simons, starting with Hercules capturing and bringing the Erymanthian Boar to Eurystheus.

I commented in the zoom chat that I could see potential for using the animation in activities with autistic children. At the same moment, independently, one of the Warsaw students said that she would like to use the animations with autistic children. We have arranged to follow up!

The possibilities, I would say, for dealing with issues like anxiety, empathy and emotions is huge. As Sonya set out, activities linked with the animations can include looking at vases from different characters's point of view. In the case of the Boar vase, this could be the queen, or Eursytheus, or as I suggested - on the day when new UK legislation acknowledging that animals can feel pain and joy has been announced - the point of view of the Boar.

For more on the Boar animation - and for other animations, including the extraordinary Sappho animation, visit the Panoply site here or the Our Mythical Childhood Panoply page here. The Our Mythical Childhood webpage is here. 

Coming back to the vase I have written about in my previous two postings - the one where Herakles is being brought by Athena to Zeus - Sonya mentioned during the session an activity I tried out in class several years ago where students story-boarded that vase. The side they story-boarded, however, was the other side, the side where Athena is coming out of the head of Zeus while a third figure - Hephaistos? Hermes? Prometheus? - moves away with an axe: 

Sixth century BCE lip cup now in the British Museum.
Image source and further details here

I know that, somewhere, I have the story-boards the students created. For now, here is one of them along with what I  wrote in a learning and teaching portfolio I was creating at the time, in 2015:

"To encourage students to think in fresh ways about evidence I have recently tried out an innovative learning activity, story-boarding in  a module I am currently convening for the first time – an introductory module on mythology for first year students. My colleague Sonya Nevin, the co-founder of the project Panoply: Animating Ancient Vases uses this technique in her workshops with school children and students and the story boards are subsequently animated by her partner. Struck that the storyboarding itself could have pedagogic value I asked the class to make storyboards for a specific artefact we were discussing in class: an archaic Greek lip-cup depicting the birth of Athena. I include here an example of the innovative, thoughtful resulting work that was produced – with students taking different perspectives on the mythological moment being depicted and the messages about divinity and mythology being asserted. This fed back into class discussion of the multiple ways of reading individual pieces of evidence and on the meaning created by each new user of a given artefact. The activity is helping to skill the students for one of their assignments: a report on a classical mythological artefact in the British Museum"

Actions for me:

1. Use animations further in the HE classroom

2. Use animations further in activities for autistic children

Sonya (left) and me (right) at a myth and education conference in
Cambridge in February 2020, the last time we met in person before lockdown...

Liminality, heroism and a *possible* further perspective on why Hercules can chime with autistic experiences interrupted by news of a presentation acceptance

Like my current two postings, this current one is practising what I preach. I'm currently recommending that the students I'm teaching should blog each week for the Myths and Mythology module assignment - and my goal is, likewise, to blog each week in response to what comes up in class. 

Choice of Hercules chimney piece, Adam Room, Grove House -
collage of photos by Maria Vorovieba

I am motivated to do this blogging because I have tied myself into doing it. But I'm motivated, too, due how how lively classes this week have been due to the engagement of students and the guest tutors: yesterday Grace Page and Cristiana Lucidi on heroines and heroes and, today, Aimee Hinds on myth and reception.

This posting responds both to yesterday's exploration of how to make sense of hero myths. It also looks at what it means to create receptions today of heroes from classical myth.

One thing that each session was concerned with was what it is about classical myth that can "speak" to people today. As we explored in both sessions, classical myths are culture-specific but the cultures in question can be contemporary ones.

My initial plan had been to turn again to one of the images I looked at last week: the lip cup showing Herakles being pulled by Athena to Zeus - and to see whether if could fit Van Gennep's schema of initiation myth, which Grace discussed, of separation - liminiality - intergration.

But I'll put that plan on hold for now - beyond saying that I think it can - my thinking is that it can validate each term in turn, and validate all three at once...

Here's why I'm putting it on hold - as I was teaching the news came though that a session I proposed for next month's Learning and Teaching Festival at Roehampton has been accepted. Along with two Roehampton students, who have been doing placements with the Our Mythical Childhood project including for its autism "wing," I'll be discussing the impact the students have had. The focus will include a discussion relevant to the one we had in class today around why classical myths can continue. The presentation's topic will, also, be relevant to our discussion in class today around what the responsibility are of those who are creating the receptions.

I'll share session's goals and abstract soon,along with the references pulled from the application form.

And I'll get back to the initiation schema at a later point - but I'll throw out for now that Hercules is ever being separated, ever liminal, ever and being reintegrated, before being separated, liminal, and integrated all over again. And it's being stuck in what can be envisaged as an ongoing cycle that can help explain, I think..., what makes Hercules so appealing in relation to experiencing the world as an autistic person...

What happened when Roehampton and Warsaw students connected - via Hercules, Zoom and Our Mythical Childhood: 5th May 2021

In my previous posting, of last week, I mentioned a plan for this blog over coming weeks, namely to put out weekly blogs on issues relating to the Myths and Mythology module I am currently teaching at Roehampton. 

Having set myself the goal of blogging this week, I had a few ideas in mind. These ideas included discussions connected with the study of gods in mythological perspective, the topic of yesterday's class. 

What I am going to focus on is, indeed, one of the gods we considered yesterday. The god in question is one who is not generally classed today as a god though this was very much key to how the ancients could experience this figure. The figure in question is Herakles-Hercules who we met in class as one of the three interacting figures on a lip cup now in the British Museum: 

Lip Cup from around 560 BCE attributed to the Phrynos Painter,
B424 in the Museum's catalogue

Here, Herakles (on our left) is being led, or pulled, by Athena to Zeus. In an example of myth as a moment, where outcomes could go in more then one direction, Herakles could be a god already, or he could be one whose future status is dependent on how Zeus will respond to the introduction of this new arrival.

From being the figure on the left of three figures, I turn now to what happened today in class, in a special session with the Our Mythical Seminar at Warsaw. Here, together with University of Roehampton and University of Warsaw students, I discussed an instance where Hercules - at the centre of three figures - is again at a turning point. Here, however, the outcome is his own, rather that some else's, to decide.

Hercules between Hard Work and Pleasure
on the eighteenth-century chimney piece panel in Grove House,
Roehampton. The panel was a key focus of today's session.

The panel in its setting, in the Adam Room,
Grove House, Roehampton

 

Grove House, the home of the Adam Room
and its Herculean panel

Students from Warsaw shared - in their own languages - reflections about the Choice including how this choice is depicted in books for children. The result was something deeply moving which I'm still working though. The experience was  moving for me also because I shared responses by several cohorts of past Roehampton students about their experiences of being affected by exploring classical receptions including Herculean ones on campus. 

What came out was a sense of how different langues and different cultural contexts can shape how individuals responses to, or even create, myth - though very much in ways which can 'speak' to and inform the experiences of others. 

When, at the end of the session, Professor Katerina Marciniak asked whether Roehampton students might like to return to the Warsaw class next week, the answer was a uniform 'yes'. I can't wait...!

To end this posting, here is a neoclassial Hercules from Warsaw - in one of the neoclassical buildings that are part of the University of Warsaw. Beneath Hercules stand a collection of participants at one of the Our Mythical Childhood seminar, at least three of whom were present again at today's session! 

Hercules - above Our Mythical Childhood delegates - in the stairwell of the Tyszkiewicz-Potocki Palace at the University of Warsaw in I think (I'll need to check!) 2018