University of Maroua: Nchifor Khan bags Ph.D. in British Literature

Nchifor Khan has completed and defended a Ph.D. thesis at the University of Maroua on the topic “Trauma and a Quasi-Reformation: A Study of Selected Works of Evelyn Waugh”.

The researcher’s primary motivation to work on this topic
was the desire to investigate how conflicts (wars in particular) affect the human mind and society at large. The focus was not on those who died but rather on those who survive wars.

Using Sigmund Freud’s treatise on how the human mind responds to shocking events, the work shows how Post Traumatic Stress Disorder could be manifested even many years after the end of a war.

It could be manifested in ways such as constant paranoia, insomnia, nightmares, amnesia, pessimism, and hedonism.

The work, therefore, reveals that a war may end but its survivors suffer neurosis. Wars change their behavior and perception of life. Most people resort to the excessive quest for pleasure in a bid to lessen the trauma of war. In doing this, they become social misfits.

For instance, some become drunks while others flirt. Society may condemn them whereas they suffer under the burden of war trauma.

About the practical relevance of the work to society, it is important in the Cameroonian context, for example, as people in the Far North Region and the English Speaking Regions and currently experiencing wars. The victims could not only be given shelter and food but they need activities and psychiatrists to ‘talk and walk’ them out of war trauma.

The Jury was composed of:
-Professor Dili Palai
-Professor Mbuh Tennu Mbuh
-Professor Adamu Pangmeshi
Professor Blossom Fondo
and
-Professor Donatus Fai Tangem

The jury unanimously awarded the candidate the grade of Tres Honorable.