Call Us
Together with Childserve and Meadowlark Psychiatric Services, Autism Society of Iowa is proud to host “From Representation to Reality: Autism and Popular Culture”, a one day virtual conference.
Join us Friday, April 3rd from 9:00am to 3:00pm as we hear from researchers, caretakers, and individuals with Autism discussing the connections, interpretations, and representations of neurodivergence in pop culture.
*Scholarships are available to cover registration fees. Please contact us at autismsocietyiowa@gmail.com to inquire.
Chris Chan
Chris Chan is a historian, author, and educator from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He has a doctorate in American History and two master’s degrees in History and Library & Information Science. He teaches graduate courses for Southern New Hampshire University and undergraduate courses for The Chicago School. He is the author of six crime novels, two volumes of short stories, a volume of poems, and five books of cultural criticism. His play Our Mothers Are Not Refrigerators, about a self-help group for people with autism, received a staged reading from Pink Umbrella Theater Company, a Milwaukee group working with disabled actors and artists. He has won the Temple Grandin Prize, his book The Autistic Sleuth won the Best Independent Book Award for TV History, and he has also been a finalist for the Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Awards, and Long Listed for the CWA Dagger Award.
Ron Miles
Ron Miles is the proud father of an autistic son, a software architect, and a musician. Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Ron moved (along with his ex-wife, son, and then-fiancé) to Central Florida in the summer of 2003 in order to use Walt Disney World as a giant therapy session for his son. He works from a home office as a software architect. He dreams of the day when he will finally be able to have a real conversation with his son, if only to find out what his son has really been thinking about all these years.
Margaret Mendenhall
Margaret Mendenhall, PhD resides in Long Beach, California and is a graduate of Pacifica Graduate Institute’s Mythological Studies Program. Additionally, her current dissertation, Healing Science Fiction: Engaging Star Trek to Explore Depth Psychology and Autism is in the review process in the Depth and Archetypal Psychology Program at the same institution. Her blog, My Daily Soul Trek, analyzes Star Trek episodes and films chronologically from a depth psychological perspective (https://mydailysoultrek.com/). She has also written, performed and produced two myth based one-woman shows, and produced and hosted the public access television series Myth Is All Around Us. She was diagnosed as autistic as a mature woman in April 2024.
Abby Niederhauser