I've just noted that the previous posting I made is dated exactly a month ago - I didn't plan such a gap, but have been caught up with a mixture of annual leave and article writing since then. Here is some news: I've this morning had the notification that I'll be giving a short pitch of a paper at a "Healing Classics" event next month. The event will be online and will consist of short presentations ahead of a longer, in-person, event at King's College London next year.
Details of the event are available here (as at 09.08.21)
And here is my title and abstract
'Sounds like being autistic': how the 'classical tradition', especially myths of Hercules, resonates with autism
This paper will look - though an autism lens - at a key commitment of 'Healing Classics' as set out in the Call For Papers, namely with 'the continuing creativity and vitality inherent in the classical tradition'. The focus will be around how - and why - classical myth can 'speak' to an autistic 'world' while helping autistic people make sense of the other, 'non-autistic' or 'neurotypical' world: the 'world' metaphor for being autistic or otherwise will be discussed during the paper. The paper, grounded in a social rather than medical model of disability, will not be concerned with any possibility of 'healing' via classics but with how classical themes can resonate with distinctive autistic ways of being and experience. The key classical theme for exploration will be myths of Hercules which - as I shall set out by discussing a set of activities I have designed for autistic children - have potential to resonate with autistic experiences including around causality, social interaction and processing and communicating emotions.
I'll end with some images from my Hercules activities which might speak particularly to a 'healing' aspect - and which I might well pick as illustrations for my paper.
The drawings are all by Steve Simons - with the colour and captions of the third one by Anna Mik.
