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Teaching Manga, Anime, and Traditional Japanese Culture

  • Penn Museum 3260 South Street Philadelphia, PA, 19104 United States (map)

The kids are all into anime these days, but how can we turn that interest into something teachable? This lecture introduces some distinctive characteristics of manga and anime and offers a few ideas about how teachers can productively use these popular media in the secondary school classroom. While teachers must use care to avoid reinforcing Orientalist stereotypes about Japan, manga and anime can be effective tools for introducing students to classical Japanese media such as picture scrolls and folk tales. Teaching with manga and anime also provides opportunities to introduce students to basic aspects of formal analysis: How do artists use static images to depict the passage of time? How do animators create the illusion of movement where there is actually none? Drawing on lessons from a popular Penn course called “The Religion of Anime,” the first part of this lecture provides a brief overview of relationships between manga, anime, and older Japanese illustrated media such as Buddhist picture scrolls. The second part offers two hands-on lessons that teachers can reproduce in their own classrooms with minimal preparation.