Autism and classical myth: now on video...

As I've mentioned a few times this autumn, students I'm teaching for a module on classical myth are blogging as their assessment for the module. As I have written postings to date, I have done so with their assignments in mind including to give a flavour of what academic blogging can look like - while stressing that other blogs are available. 

The students also have an option of an another pathway - of creating a video diary. I've been meaning to share some videos of me talking, again to show how videoing *can* - not necessarily should - be done. And, now, by coincidence, colleagues at the Our Mythical Childhood project have created a YouTube channel for the Acclaim Network. It includes to date two videos where I'm talking, with more to follow. 

In the first that should come up by clicking the link, I'm zooming into a conference in Israel in June 2021 to talk about the lessons I was then completing for autistic children based around an episode involving Hercules facing a choice between two pathways. 

You will see me holding up objects including a statue, sharing a concern about filibustering myself, defending colouring-in activities, talking about emotions and autism, sharing what's happened when autistic children encounter Hercules, including via Disney, and talking - including in the screenshot above - about the object on which the lessons focus: a Choice of Hercules chimneypiece panel 5 minutes from my office in Grove House, Roehampton...

The other video is earlier - from several years back, in 2014, before I had become struck that the panel in Grove House might become a focus of the lessons for autistic children I was tentatively planning. I had already become deeply interested in the panel - and in the video I share that interest with Dr Anastasia Bakogianni of Classics Confidential.

More videos to follow - including of me zooming into events at Manchester Metropolitan University, King's College London and the University of Reading...

Neurodiverse Classics: constructive connections

I write with news: this blog's topic will be on the programme of next April's Classical Association conference! 

Back in the summer, I had a very enjoyable time building up a proposal along with a group of classicists beyond and within 'the academy' for a panel on neurodiversity and classics. I would have loved to have mentioned this at the time, but decided that I had better not, in case the proposal didn't find its way onto the programme. 

But it wasn't turned down - we recently heard the good news that the panel has been accepted. And so I am now, at last, about to share the proposal. I'll start with an image from one of the hosts of the panel: Asterion, the Minotaur.

Asterion!

And here's the proposal:

The pandemic and lockdown have focussed attention on inequalities in society, and perhaps especially in the educational sector. Students in schools and beyond have reacted very variously to online provision, and some neurodivergent students have been able to flourish online. Social anxiety has been reduced, and different ways of learning have been accommodated (e.g. repetition of material via online hosting). This panel brings together students, lecturers, teachers and heritage professionals to explore ‘constructive connections’ between neurodiversity and classics.

In order to exemplify the kind of inclusive practices that work for many neurodivergent classicists, as well as for others, the panel proposes a variety of complementary formats. We plan a series of short, pre-recorded videos on the topics listed below, to be hosted by the CA in advance of and during the conference. Asterion, a new online space celebrating neurodiversity in classics, will host a series of blogposts as part of a week-long event on the theme of ‘constructive connections’, ideally in partnership with the CA. Comments and questions on these and on the videos will be invited from conference participants, and these will be addressed and discussed by a roundtable of the panellists, in a live online session of the conference. If the CA prefers that this live session be in-person, panel members will accommodate that, but it is important to note that the online dimension fosters and exemplifies good practice for neurodivergent classicists. Finally, panel members will be happy to staff a table or stall during the conference, in person, in order to engage in-person attendees with the videos and blog, and to foster further networking among those interested in neurodiversity and classics.

Topics for videos:

Justin Biggi, How classics helped navigate neurodiverse diagnoses, how my neurodiversity informs my understanding of the classics.

Susan Deacy, The ACCLAIM: Autism Connecting CLAssically-inspired Mythology Network and classical myth resources for autistic children.

Cora Beth Fraser, The Relaxed Tutorial Project: designing inclusive approaches to online teaching in universities.

Laura Jenkinson, Making things easier for Neurodiverse school pupils

Claudina Romero Mayorga, Tactile and multisensorial teaching tools in museums

Ben Tanner, Resources for teaching classics online

Justine T. Wolfenden, Asterion: the case for a network to celebrate and support neurodiversity in Classics 

I very much anticipate blogging further about the panel as April nears...

Gods are strange...

Like my previous few postings this autumn, the current one responds to the most recent topic on the Myths and Mythology module I am currently teaching at Roehampton. I have posted previously on myth and community and on myth and gender, always in relation to an autistic 'lens'. 

This current posting relates to the most recent session, which was on myth and gods. I'm going to continues with reference to an autistic lens but only briefly for now. I'm going to set out some initial ideas and then build on these in later postings. At least that's the plan - and if the plan changes, for example, in response to something that comes up in class that stirs me into blogging about it (compare the previous posting!), I'll set out why...

We discussed in class how ancient gods are entities that modern people often try too hard to make sense of, in part because these deities are so much a part of 'Western' culture. However, as we discussed, ancient gods are strange. They were strange to the ancients who venerated and mythologised them. They are stranger than modern scholarship often allows.

In upcoming postings I plan to look into this strangeness in relation to the two female personages - goddesses? personifications? women? - that Herakles (himself 'god' and 'hero') encounters at a curious place - a parting of the roads.

It is an encounter that - including because of its strangeness, and because of the strangeness of its gods - can resonate with being autistic. More to come on this point... For now, including to give a few scholarly perspectives, here are three instances where strangeness *is* part of the study of ancient gods.

1. A book by S.C. Humphreys whose title, The Strangeness of Gods, was inspired by an anthropological study of religion by Pascal Boyer which emphasises, according to Humphreys, that "what we call 'religion' is always an engagement with the unknown and extraordinary". Note that the cover image for this book - one of the three images that heads this posting - evokes such strangeness via a depiction of Herakles on a red-figure cup now in the Gregorian Etruscan Museum, Vatical city. Like when he reaches the crossroads, Herakles is here in another strange place, a bowl, which looks to be carrying him across the sea (unless the bowl happens 'just' to be painted with sea creatures and waves)...

2. The series Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World which is concerned with figures that are 'part of our culture' but 'has another aim too, to explore their strangeness'. I wrote this in 2017 ahead of the publication of several new volumes in the series, starting with Hermes by Arlene Allan. I'm currently, four years on , rewriting the foreword for the next volume due out. The familiarity vs strangeness point is one that I intend to keep in.

3. Thirdly, the chapter 'Analyzing Greek Gods' from Robert Parker's On Greek Religion which, in posing the question 'what is a Greek god?', includes a discussion of an image - now in the Staatliche Museum in Munich - of one of the major gods, indeed of a god so major that he can count as 'god' or even 'God', namely Zeus. As we discussed in class, Zeus is often depicted looking like an adult man, just one holding something extraordinary, the thunderbolt. But this is Zeus as a huge serpent - Zeus Meilichios - a Zeus who is strange (as Zeus always in fact is...).

More soon...