Event Details

Every Tuesday 9.30 – 10.30am, we invite a Lancaster academic to brief us on their research. The format is a 20 minute talk followed by discussion.

What literature tells us about neurodivergent futures: communicating across the neurological divides

Dr Anna Stenning, University of Leeds

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us have found ourselves relying on new ways of communicating and collaborating as part of our work and social lives. Those of us who have already relied heavily on online media to connect us prior to the pandemic – including disabled, chronically ill and neurodivergent people, for whom there were already many barriers to ‘normal’ social and work lives – there has been little cultural recognition of this fact. Yet, it is clear from literature from the 1990s onwards that neuro-atypical-identifying people have been shaping emerging forms of collaboration and expression, including both technologies and creative works ranging from videogames to novels. This talk looks at literary representations of neurodiversity – defined as conditions formerly classed as a cognitive and social deficit but which are increasingly framed as difference – as they connect to new ways of imagining technology, creativity and collaboration. I explore works of fiction, graphic novel and life writing by the autistic community as they respond to and trouble normative expectations of communication, considering what they might teach us about new ways of communicating across neurotypes. While this subject may seem to be a niche interest to a minority culture, I end by questioning how ‘normative’ standards of communication prevent us from working together as we face our collective futures.

Anna Stenning is a Wellcome Fellow in the School of English at the University of Leeds. She has recently co-founded the Literature and Neurodiversity network and her current work explores literary depictions of autistic experience. Her specialisms include environmental writing and late Victorian fiction and poetry. She is co-editor, with David Borthwick and Pippa Marland, of Walking, Landscape and Environment (2019); and of Neurodiversity Studies: A New Critical Paradigm (2020) with Hanna Bertilsdotter-Rosqvist and Nick Chown. Her first solo-authored book is Edward Thomas: A Miscellany (2016).