Autism diagnosis leads ASU professor to write book about neurodiversity and literature
Associate Professor Bradley Irish poses for a portrait inside his office in Ross-Blakely Hall on ASU's Tempe campus. Photo by Deanna Dent/ASU
Bradley Irish always knew his mind worked differently.
But it wasn’t until two years ago that Irish, an associate professor in Arizona State University’s Department of English, discovered why.
He was diagnosed with autism.
Irish wasn’t surprised or dismayed. Instead, he was curious.
Curious to explore the way he thinks and about neurodiversity in general.
That curiosity led to Irish writing an upcoming academic book titled “Literary Neurodiversity Studies: Current and Future Directions.”
The book examines how neurodivergent people might look at literature in a different way. Irish has also created a website about literary neurodiversity.
ASU News talked to Irish — who also has a book out studying emotion in Shakespeare’s time ("The Rivalrous Renaissance: Envy and Jealously in Early Modern English Literature") — about literary neurodiversity and his own personal journey.
Editor's note: The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Question: Let’s start with this — what are literary neurodiversity studies?
Answer: It’s a relatively new field that has emerged over the last decade or so. It’s developed out of the concept of neurodiversity, which is an awareness that people’s minds and the bodies they are entwined with work in all sorts of different ways. So many people are familiar with the concept of neurodiversity through modern categories like ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) or dyslexia or things like that.
Literary neurodiversity studies is taking that principle and applying it to the analysis of literature. It asks how do we look at literature and see it differently when we recognize the fact that there are all sorts of different ways that people’s minds and bodies work. That’s the kind of foundational principle.
Q: How does your book examine that?
A: The book is trying to lay some of that out because there’s never really been a book to kind of summarize this new field that’s emerging. I’m hoping that what I’ve written will be a kind of introductory first step that people can go to when it comes time to sort of become interested in this new field.
Q: You mentioned how neurodivergent people can look at literature in different ways. How so?
A: There are a variety of ways we can do it. For example, we can look at fictional characters and the ways that their minds seem to work and ask how they align with modern categories of neurodiversity. For example, what happens if a particular literary character like Sherlock Holmes is examined through the lens of the modern understanding of autism? What does that sort of say about the way that his mind is depicted in the stories?
It may remind us of certain characteristic ways that autistic people tend to think or feel or act. It can also help us understand authors because there are certain authors in the modern context who actively identify as neurodivergent. You can also look at authors in the past and tentatively speculate about the ways their mind works in ways that may not be the sort of typical, normalized understanding.
What happens if a particular literary character like Sherlock Holmes is examined through the lens of the modern understanding of autism?
Bradley IrishAssociate professor of English
Q: You’re not trying to label characters or authors, though, right?
A: We have to be very careful because we never want to diagnose historical figures with a particular modern label because that’s anachronistic and, indeed, people in neurodiversity studies have a lot of skepticism about diagnostic labels in general because they’re often used to marginalize and pathologize people who are neurologically different. But we can still see authors from the past and think about the ways that their minds work in slightly less typical ways. And, finally, at the level of actual things like language, we can also talk about how certain forms of literary style seem to be aligned or remind us of neurodivergent expression.
For example, many neurodivergent people have certain atypical relationships to language, and that can manifest in the pages of a novel if a character talks a certain way, or an author describes things in a certain way. So there are all sorts of ways that you can look at neurodivergence and neurodiversity as a way to shed new light on the way that literature works.
Q: Does looking at it from a neurodivergent perspective give those are who neurodivergent perhaps a greater appreciation of authors or characters?
A: I think that’s exactly right. Paying attention to forms of neurodivergence in literature shows us that people whose minds work a little bit differently have always existed. They have always played an important role in the way that the world works. In terms of representation, it makes (neurodivergent people) a little bit more seen and valid.
Q: How did you discover you were autistic and how did that influence you deciding to write this book?
A: I always knew that my mind worked a little bit differently, but for all sorts of reasons I didn’t sort of present in the ways that we stereotypically associate with an autistic man. Because we have a very typical stereotype of a white, young male with a very flat affect, and I didn’t fit that. So no one ever thought that I may have been autistic when I was growing up. I was in therapy for years, and none of the people that I worked with even brought up the possibility that I might be autistic. It wasn't until I sort of raised that possibility almost as a joke to my current therapist and sort of said that I sometimes wonder if I’m on the spectrum. I went and got a formal diagnosis, and it turns out that absolutely I’m autistic. My direction in turning to neurodiversity studies was entirely prompted by curiosity to my own autism.
Q: Is there anything else we should know about the book?
A: I hope that this book will very much speak to neurodivergent people like myself, but it's not something that only will be interesting to people who identify as neurodivergent, because really it just points to the fact that there are all sorts of different ways that minds and bodies work. And paying attention to that fact can help us understand literature better.
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