Creativity and Community among Autism-Spectrum Youth

This edited volume explores the roles of socially-channeled play and performance in the developmental trajectories of young people who fall on the autism spectrum. The contributors offer possibilities for channels of activity through which youth on the autism spectrum may find acceptance, affirmation, and kinship with others. 'Positive social updraft' characterizes the social channels through which people of difference might be swept up into broader cultural currents such that they feel valued, appreciated, and empowered. These currents not only have an upward motion themselves, they also catch other elements in their draft and carry them up in their flow. A social updraft provides cultural meditational means that include people in a current headed 'upward,' allowing people of atypical makeups to become fully involved in significant cultural activity that brings them a feeling of social belonging.

Peter Smagorinsky is Distinguished Research Professor of English Education at The University of Georgia, USA. His research considers the notion of 'mental health' in terms of cultivating the assets of people of anomalous frames of mind.