Autism and Classical Myth: Myths, rainbow, nature, Hercules...

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 4 October 2021

Myths, rainbow, nature, Hercules...

On Friday I taught the first class for Myths and Mythology, a module that has been at the heart of the classical syllabus at Roehampton during the 20 years that there has been classics at Roehampton, and which I've been convening for several years. The module is assessed via an academic blog, and as I like to practice what I preach, I'll be linking blog postings with that module over the next few weeks, always - I aim - with an autism focus.

Ideally, I'll be setting aside time to do this on Friday after class, but just like after last Friday, I might not always manage that. On Friday I didn't manage it for a good reason, namely a meeting with a teacher at a primary school in London to discuss a class at the school on one of the Hercules lessons I've developed. This session would take place during the spring term when the focus in the class in question is Ancient Greece. More to follow on what I'll be doing there, but in short, I'm excited!

For now let me get started with the Myths-related blogging with an appearance looking like Iris, a prism, which I couldn't stop my screen showing during a recent zoom session - thanks to the bright light which started flooding though my office window. A photo from one of the participants, Prof. Katarzyna Marciniak - who has been mentioned many times on this blog! - is at the top of this posting followed by another photo - a meta one - of this blog, which I showed during the session.

Let me continue with the abstract of a paper I recorded ahead of a conference which took place last week: 'Our Mythical Nature'. I'll share the recording of my paper soon, but for now... a taster:

Once, according to a story told by Socrates in Xenophon’s Memorabilia, Herakles reached a curious place at a crossroads where he sat, pondering which path – one of struggle or one of pleasure – to take in life. This paper explores how, via a focus on how nature – both in respect to the natural world and human nature – the episode can resonate with autistic children’s experiences including around entering new spaces, making choices and conceptualising causality. I discuss a set of lessons I have developed for the Our Mythical Childhood project, each focused around an aspect of the episode, each relating to a particular aspect of autistic children’s experiences, and each - like Hercules’s choice - connecting hard-work and fun.

More soon...