Studying Mark Twain’s The Diaries of Adam and Eve from a Ghanaian Context

Abstract

Abstract This article outlines the practical pedagogical approach used in the teaching of Mark Twain’s The Diaries of Adam and Eve in a Ghanaian university, and how the chosen approach, which involves some amount of “enactment” of the text, guides students in focusing on the nuances encountered as part of their study of the text under the “World Literature” course. This article highlights how professors incorporate “enactment” as an approach to raise and sustain students’ interest in the text and to further guide students in identifying and discussing universal subject matters such as marriage, misogyny, and human fellowship from the text. Employing enactment creates in students a sense of ownership of the text and involvement in its study. The discussion concludes by highlighting the importance of maintaining such foreign texts in the academic curriculum, but not losing sight of the challenges academic faculties face by doing so.