Lecture 10: The Vanished

Path, Part II
20th January, 2017

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Today we’ll watch some
parts of this 2010 film by
Bharath Murthy, author of
The Vanished Path. The
film illuminates many
aspects of doujinshi or self-
published manga.

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Afterthoughts from last week on using manga in the
classroom

We talked about manga currently

being produced outside Japan. Here’s
an example you could use for teaching:
Shakespeare’s Hamlet in manga,
illustrated by Emma Vieceli (2007)

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We discussed different kinds of manga last
week. Another category of course is
webmanga, produced for online reading (for
e.g. http://www.eigomanga.com/#start.html,
as opposed to http://kissmanga.com/ which
often features scans of manga in print), which
is both easier/cheaper to produce and access.
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 Let’s continue the group
activities from last week

• Suppose you’re a teacher and you have been asked for

some recommendations for the school library for 9th and
10th graders. You choose The Vanished Path and similar
graphic novels. How would you justify these choices?
• Enhances Inter-Cultural Competence among students
• The story is told in an entertaining way
• Makes for a change from the usual (prose) novels used in
class

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• Please design a class test based upon The Vanished Path
to check that students have actually read the
pages/chapters you assigned. Your questions are
objective-style, and can be multiple choice, texts with
gaps, etc.

• Who is/are the protagonists?

• Give one example of how the travelogue breaks the 4th
wall and describe it.
• Gap text based on p. 6 with expressions below (for e.g.
the Wheel of Dhamma, Tathagata, etc.)

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• Please design a task sheet based upon The Vanished Path for students to
work on during class.

• Try to name all the religions in India, giving approximate percentages of

the population. Use a circle diagram/pie chart.
• What kinds of symbols of Buddhism appear in the book. Find where they
occur in the book and present them to the rest of the class.
• Could you imagine yourself as a Buddhist after reading this book? (this
question may be a bit problematic if classrooms should be non-political or
at least neutral towards all religions/races/genders/classes etc.)