Instructor Spotlight: Steve Edwards

Tell us about your background and what inspired you to teach this course

This course has been years in the making. In 2009, at the age of 35, I was diagnosed with autism (it was called Aspergers then). Like a lot of late-diagnosed adults, it came as a complete shock to me—and also not a shock at all. With this framework, my life suddenly made a lot more sense. I had a new way of thinking about myself and my identity—especially my identity as a writer. There wasn’t a single story the diagnosis didn’t somehow touch. And as a teacher of writing, I wondered: If there were things I’d missed about my own life by virtue of not knowing I was autistic, what might I have missed in books I read? What might I be missing in my current understandings of the people around me or our culture more generally? This class comes from those questions. I want students to have the chance to think about their own differences and the implications (especially the benefits) of acknowledging difference as a way of exploring what it means to communicate, make art, and better understand each other.

How do you define neurodiversity?

For this class I’m thinking about neurodiversity as a term for the idiosyncratic ways our minds engage the world around us. This could range from differences in how we process sensory information to differences in how we communicate, all of which have an impact on how we think, learn, and behave. And it also impacts how we understand each other’s thinking, learning, and behaviors.

How do you anticipate literature changing now that the terms neurodiversity and autism have entered the popular lexicon?

This is such a tough question! It’s one of the things we have been talking about in class. My short answer is: I have no idea. On the surface, growing awareness of neurodiversity seems like a good thing—a kind of progress. But it’s also led to a proliferation of stereotypical portrayals of autistic people in literature and media. As though autistic people are defined by their quirks and eccentricities instead of by who they are as whole people. That said, we have also talked in class about how limited portrayals have the potential to open the door for more refined, complex, and human representations. My sense is that the conversation around neurodiversity in literature will continue in that direction—toward deeper, more nuanced understandings—especially as more neurodiverse writers take ownership of their narratives.