The essays collected in these New Trends volumes represent an innovation in International Conferences of Ethiopian Studies. They are timely and current, and they are affordable for student, scholar and official alike. They reveal the wide variety of Ethiopian studies and scholarly concerns about the country. They sum up whole fields of study and indicate where researchers might usefully accomplish more work in the future. Many oft he essays are cautious assessments of difficult problems; others treat controversial topics with judicious forebearance; not a few are redolent with political pitch; and some are chronicles of narratives. Altogether, they demonstrate that Ethiopian studies are alive and well and surviving the various political shocks of the post-imperial era.

Especially clear is the leading role of Ethiopian scholars in the study of their own country. Addis Ababa University continues to reveal itself as a venue of first-rate scholarship, a position it maintained throughout the years of military rule; and its successful graduate programs have trained faculty for Ethiopia's other institutions of higher education. Their work appears in these New Trends volumes, and has the crispness and direction characteristic of the Addis Ababa University tradition.

Those international scholars who have maintained fruitful links with Ethiopia also write with authority and relevancy. Especially important are the large number of junior scholar, both Ethiopian and foreigner, who have made their first presentations at the 12th International COnference. Their excellent scholarship indicates that the future of Ethiopian studies is well endowed with intelligence and energy.

CATEGORY
Cultural Studies, Politics, Sociology/AFRICA