Autism and Classical Myth: 'Sounds like being autistic': how the 'classical tradition', especially myths of Hercules, resonates with autism - next month at King's College London, via zoom...

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.

Monday, 9 August 2021

'Sounds like being autistic': how the 'classical tradition', especially myths of Hercules, resonates with autism - next month at King's College London, via zoom...

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.