Autism Acceptance Week - Friday: An interactive mythological adventure inspired by *Classical Mythology and Children's Literature... An Alphabetical Odyssey*

When I was about 10, I became aware of a kind of book for children that I'd not heard of previously. This may have just been new to me - or it might have been a completely new kind of book. The books of this kind appeared in the 'boys' section of the catalogues of children's books that my primary school had started to give each student each month. And they appeared in the section for children several years younger than I was. So I felt that these books doubly were not meant 'for me'. 

I wasn't able to make a case for any of them being bought for me - and I wasn't aware of anyone at school who'd bought any of them - so I never actually looked inside.

I've just realised that I've not said what these books were. They were adventure books where you would start at the beginning but, based on your response to choices you would be offered at specific points, you would be taken to a specific part of the book. These were books, then, where the readers could move back and forwards, perhaps returning to specific sections under different circumstances.

The books seemed exciting but also daunting - and I'm wondering whether I never pushed hard enough to get the books because I was afraid of being overwhelmed by them. It could be a bit like how I like the idea of video games but am too daunted by the sense of now knowing where I would be in them ever to play them.

I am writing this because I have been enjoying reading a new book that is lending itself to being dipped into and read in any order. It is an A-Z of mythological-inspired children's literature and it is the latest in the series of books in the series Our Mythical Childhood. 

The cover of An Alphabetical Odyssey

It is written by Liz Hale and Miriam Riverlea and illustrated by Steve Simons: all of whom have ben part of my life over the past few years. Indeed, I witnessed some of how the book came together thanks to Liz's updates in Warsaw at some of our project workshops.

It must be a lovely print book to own, but I'm reading it online, where anyone can access it freely as it's available as an Open Access book, as are all the books in the series.

Screenshot of the landing page for An Alphabetical Odyssey

It is organised so that the reader can dip in as they want, and, as I am reading it online I am making use of the 'find' facility to read around the book by putting in particular words and phrases. Here's hit 10/117 for 'hercules':

Searching in An Alphabetical Odyssey

Actually, now that I think of it, I like the idea of an academic book where the reader is given a choice at the end of each chapter/section and where, depending on what they choose, they are sent to a particular place in the book. Could such a book work? Could it be written in the first place?

Also, could there be books on classical myth organised this way? I am aware of 'choose your own' books on classical myth already, but those that I've seen have been structured in a linear way. In one, for instance, on Hercules, I recall that the book is structured around the twelve labours. I also recall that the reader has to make a choice during each labour and is told either that they have succeeded in the task in question and can move to the next one, or that they have failed and have been killed. If the latter happens, I think that they need to start all over again - until, presumably they get each labour 'right'.

But could a book be written where the reader can be sent on their own path though classical myth? Has such a book already been written? Such a book could have a really good fit with one reason why, I think, classical myth can appeal to autistic people. This reason is that, for all its fixed points, the potential for variation in myth is huge. There might be twelve labours for instance, but what happens in each can vary, the ordering can vary and who is in them can vary. There don't even need to be 12 - sometimes there are 10, or a vase painting will zoom in on just one. Or some labour will be being depicted that seems not to be one of the 'canonical' ones.

I just put 'choice' and 'choose' in the search facility of Liz and Miriam's book. A number of hits came up, including to a text book headed 'Choose your own adventure' on page 405 which includes four examples, written between the 1980s and 2018. The introduction to the textbox starts with the detail that these books were 'initially popular in the 1980s'. This would fit with when I first heard of them - I was 10 in 1980. 

Aha... 'These interactive adventure stories', they continue' in which the reader determines the course of the narrative, have had a recent resurgence'. And indeed, a few months ago, I heard from a colleague about online tools for writing interactive 'choose your own' books. I've done a quick search - and am going to look at some of the templates, and maybe even have a go...

This is Autism Acceptance Day Eve Eve - I'm aiming to do a further posting tomorrow.

Autism Acceptance Week – Thursday… ‘What Isadora Duncan knew: Athena as Dance Movement Therapist in ancient Greek art’

Abraham Walkowitz, Isadora Duncan #29, c. 1915.
Water and ink over graphite, Brooklyn Museum 39.174,
retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

A formative period for me while I was very much in the formative stages of being interested in connecting autism and classical myth was when I took a week-long dramatherapy course run by the Arts Therapies team at Roehampton.

It was an experience that went differently than I had expected. I had imagined us sitting in rows making notes from sessions led by the tutor. In fact, however, to introduce us to dramatherapy, we were all immersed in it as though we were clients. It was a deeply personal, sometimes difficult and transformative time.

Then, about a year later, I signed up for another course run by the same team on autistic bodies and movement. I was excited and was feeling some anxiety too about what would happen – but what happened was that the course was cancelled. So I never got to know.

Since then, however, movement and autism has been something I have been wanting to find out more about. And already, I have seen that it is when people copy the gestures of Hercules, Pleasure and Hard Work - on the panel that is key to the autism activities I have developed so far - that they move to a deeper level of engagement.

Carter Workshop, Chimneypiece panel depicting Hercules tasked
with choosing between Pleasure and Hard Work, Adam Room, Grove House,
Roehampton. Photo by Marina Arcady

I am soon going to be writing a paper that might enable me to gain an understanding of some of what might be involved. I am going to be spending several days in Coimbra in Portugal in July, participating in the Celtic Classics Conference. The panel I’ll be part of is ‘Religious Movement in Ancient Mediterranean Art’, convened by two inspirational ancient religion and art scholars Ellie Mackin Roberts and Tyler Jo Smith. What prompted me to offer a paper was especially one of the features in the Call for Papers which was that ritualised movement would connect participants and the deities being worshipped. Reading this, I wondered what could be brought into play – pun not intended, but I can’t think of a better way to put it… - when it is the god who is dancing.

I proposed a paper that employs Dance Movement Theory to examine the role of dace when on particular ancient deity, Athena, is being depicted or imagined as a dancer.

Athena emerging from the of Zeus, Attic black-figure belly amphora, c. 550-525 BCE 
belly amphora, now in the Louvre, Paris F 32. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

Here is the paper I proposed: 

What Isadora Duncan knew: Athena as Dance Movement Therapist in ancient Greek art

As noted in the Call for Papers, ritualised movement connects participants and the divinities being worshipped. But what about when it is the divinity that dances? Employing Dance/Movement Theory – where a client and a therapist engage in an empathetic process to facilitate the physical, emotional, social and cognitive integration of the individual – this paper will explore the significance of dance in relation to Athena. This is a deity whose dancing challenges prevailing assumptions about this god as a deity of ‘mind’ whose very theonym is, indeed, derived from ‘mind of god’ in Plato’s Kratylos. But, as this paper explores, there is already the ‘other name’, Pallas, derived in the same dialogue from frenzied, frantic pulsations. 

The paper will explore how Athena enacts a divine movement suggesting an instance of what Isadora Duncan knew: that ‘dance is the movement of the universe concentrated in an individual’, above all when Athena is depicted emerging from the head – the mind indeed – of another making furious, violent movements. The paper will start with images of Athena dancing herself into being. It will then turn to depictions of a frantically moving Athena at the Gigantomachy. Finally it will explore images of worshippers dancing like – or, better, as – the deity, suggesting a reconfiguration of space and time where the act of worship is creating the god, and where the god (therapist) and worshipper (client) are joined in an intensely empathetic creative moment.

Writing this posting has helped me to feel ready to get started – as has what I was writing about in the chapter draft of the book I mentioned yesterday. I was looking, among other things, at the play the Lysistrata, where the women of Athens go on sex strike and occupy the Akropolis – the home of Athena’s key sanctuary in the city. The play ends with a dance of joy where the final of a series of deities to be evoked to conclude the performance is… Athena.

More planned tomorrow...

Autism Acceptance Week Wednesday - some midweek updates and the link for the talk mentioned in yesterday's posting

 Today, I'm writing a shorter posting a I'll be out for a chunk of the day, computer-less, writing a first draft of a chapter of a book [on women of ancient Athens - a subject perhaps for a future posting, not least as writing this book is giving me a new perspective on what it means to approach classics autistically...].

As the week goes on, I'll share some updates on what's happened since I put out a Call for Members on an email list for classicists on Monday. I'm also going write - I think - about what it means to be in an autism 'acceptance' week rather than an 'awareness' week as previously. And I'm worried that in the post to the classicists list, I wrote 'awareness' - the post is out there, as responses tell me, but hasn't come into my inboxes...

For today, here is the link to the recording of the talk I mentioned yesterday on my autism and classical myth project. The image on the first slide looks like a saucepan I'm thinking:

Here is a screenshot showing the talk in the context of the YouTube channel as it's currently looking:

And here's the link to the recording

More tomorrow!

I am not sure whether this is actually true: Autism Acceptance Week – Tuesday… From Richard Burton, to the autism test, to forcefields

I am not sure whether this is actually true, but I remember hearing decades ago that Richard Burton would never watch a performance of himself. I’m not sure why – perhaps it was because otherwise he would be constrained. Perhaps he preferred to be in the moment, like a stage actor.

And so, I’m not sure why, and I’m not even sure whether this memory of something I recall hearing while a child is accurate. But it’s been something I remember, because it resonates, I think, with how I feel about my practice as someone who has been ‘in the moment’ a lot – teaching, delivering papers…

I used to freeze were I recorded, let alone filmed, and I do not feel comfortable speaking to any group if a door is open. Then zoom-teaching came along with Covid, and recording sessions because normalised pretty quickly. When I started teaching remotely and running events that way, pressing the record button – and later watching things back – became part of my practice. And I felt surprisingly okay with it, however much watching an earlier version of me, if only from a short while earlier, seemed strange.

I’ve had the video recording of a remote talk I gave a few months ago on my autism-myth project for a while but could not bring myself to look at it until recently - and it’s okay! - although I do say ‘um’ a lot because I’m never reading a script but talking in the moment – responding to the ‘room’. And one thing that helps me feel a sense of ‘connect’, I find, is the chat facility.

Screenshot from zoom talk - an earlier one (likely in 2021 or early 2022)
from the one mentioned in this posting

I noticed during lockdown that autistic people sometimes like zoom chat. For my part, I tend to be pretty active there during any session I’ve joined – otherwise, I can’t really process what I’m hearing. It’s a substitute for the feeling of ‘presence’ of in-person events, I think.

Anyway, as well as reviewing the video, I have been looking at the saved zoom chat from during the event including from where I asked participants, if they wanted, to introduce themselves. Some participants shared their experiences of autism including as autistic people and one participants said something that resonated when they introduced themselves via the metaphor of being bilingual – that is of speaking autism and speaking like a neurotypical person, coming I think, from having been negotiating a neurotypical world as an autistic person who had no idea that they were autistic – when then had no idea, until, I think, their children’s diagnosis as autistic that they could be autistic when they didn’t fit the images of autistic standardly put out.

I will develop this later. But, writing about how far an autistic person ‘has’ autistic traits has got me thinking about the ‘autism test’ which Simon Baron Cohen devised and which, last time I looked, was available online. You answer a set of questions by ticking four options ranging from ‘very’ one thing to ‘very not’ the same and end up with a score that puts you in a category of very, to potentially, to not autistic.

Has anyone reading this taken this test? If so, how many times? I’ve taken it several times, firstly years back, because I guess I had been buying into a view that autism, as the ‘spectrum’ it was generally then seen as, could be pinned down, as though each person could be found somewhere in a scale from ‘very’ to ‘not’.

Anyway, each time I have done it, I have got a different score. So what does this mean? Does this say something about the test, or about myself and how I connect with a world I’m in or not in?

I always loved forcefields as a child... they would figure from time to time on tv shows I’d watch – at least this is how I remember it - and I’m increasingly finding the forcefield image a helpful one to convey what it’s like to move in the world while feeling apart from it.

Later, this Autism Acceptance Week, I shall build on the thread that has been running though this posting of being in/not in worlds by writing about a way of conceptualising what it is to be autistic, and non-autistic. This is Double Empathy Theory.

More tomorrow…

Autism Acceptance Week - Monday: ACCLAIM Network update

I said recently on this blog that my plan is to blog like I do gardening as of this spring, namely little and often. 

The garden's coming on quite nicely and in April I'm going to try to plant a meadow. As World Autism Acceptance Week has started, I am going to escalate the blogging. I'll keep it going little and often but I'm aiming for little and often each day until Autism Day on Sunday (April 2nd).

I am going to start by giving a shout out to the ACCLAIM (Autism Connecting CLAssically-Inspired Myth) Network which is growing steadily - I'd try for a gardening metaphor here but it might seem a little forced? 

Acclaim members: as at 27.3.23

So... for Day 1 of Autism Week, here's the link to the page of members to date. The most recent bio, of Robin Diver, was added just last week. We're an impressive range of people I think. Do check us out if you haven't already. We all look a little older than the photos...

And if you'd like to join, contact me via this blog or email at susan.deacy@bristol.ac.uk 

Emancipatory and reflective pedagogies... What I'll be doing to open up a world in Cambridge next month

When I attend any conference I am speaking at I always prefer to be on early - as early as possibly and ideally right at the start to kick things off. That leaves me able not just to enjoy the event but listen to the other speakers. For some reason, however, topics I present on tend to fall late on in conference programmes.

I remember this happening at the last Classical Association conference I attended in person.* That was in Glasgow in 2008, where I took part in a panel on classics and student employability in the final slot, right before lunch on the last day. And it will be happening this year as well - at the Classical Association conference in Cambridge next month. 

Of the 82 panels over several days, I shall be in panel 82, starting after the final lunch and ending after most sessions will have finished and after most people will have left.

But what a panel..! Here it is, on a poster of events of interest to school teachers:

And here is the order or play:

After Evelien Bracke will have spoken about her work pioneering the teaching of ancient languages to primary school students, I will talk about how I am involved in 'opening up a world' - the world being one where classics and autism connect via myth. I shall be talking Hercules, and, hopefully, premiering an animation of Hercules choosing by Steve Simons. 

Once I'm done, I shall be able to enjoy the remaining papers, which include presentations on classics in Nigeria and on work linked, like my own, with the Our Mythical Childhood project.

I'll share the abstract for my talk soon and in upcoming posts I'm aiming to share other things I'm currently up to...

*Not that I've been exactly absent from Classical Association conferences down the years... I've contributed to several panels in absentia, and I coordinated a video for last year's panel at the Swansea CA. What's more I was in London, in person, for the joint CA/FIEC conference in 2019. At both the Swansea and London events my contributions were linked with autism and classical myth. I blogged on what I did at FIEC: here, here, here and here. And I blogged on what I did for the Swansea CA here.

Why this blog is like my garden

Pleasure's garden - detail of Steve Simons' redrawing
of Choice of Hercules panel, Adam Room, Roehampton, London

I've said a few times over the years on this blog that autism isn't about a week in March/April - or indeed a whole month. It's always there - a way of being. But, still, there's something about a particular occasion that gives a focal point - a fixed point - a sense of structure. 

And so, I'm going to spend this March and April blogging after a break: a break when I have been seriously active, including:

• Doing the final things to my book of Hercules-themed lessons for autistic children to lift it out of produce, most recently working on the index. The book will be out this year and I'm...
• Planning the next mythological phrase, again based around a mythological figure, the identity of whom I'll announce soon, perhaps during Autism Acceptance Week.
• Reading some wonderful books by autistic and neurodivergent authors including Nick Walker's Neuroqueer Heresies and a Kind of Spark by Elle McNicoll
• Drafting quite a few postings for this blog which I'd better start typing up (I always write long-hand first).

There's more: but that'll do for now like when I pause for and from gardening at the moment. The garden had got away from me but, for the last two weeks I've been out there for half an hour to an hour most weekdays and it's becoming mine...