Cynthia Ace decided to pursue a Master's Degree in Women's Studies after being immersed in the rich offerings of the UCLA Women's Studies Undergraduate Program. After years of community activism she decided that she wanted to prepare herself for educating women, in both academic and community settings, in how to maximize the use of their knowledge and skills in negotiating life choices which are made within a system of race, class, and gender inequality. The empowerment of African American women is central to her work which focuses on strategies for activism and organizing, and exposing those systems and ideologies that have been used as divisive tools against women's empowerment.

Azza Basarudin spent the summer studying Arabic at the Arabic Language Insitute (ALI) at the American University in Cairo Egypt (AUC), under the sponsorship of the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (FLAS). Basarudin co-authored, "Mazes of Boundaries, Identities, Memories and Longings: Letters Between Two Border Crossing Women" which was published in Winter 2004 in Al-Raida, a quarterly journal of the Institute for Women's Studies in the Arab World. With fellow doctoral candidate Khanum Shaikh, Basarudin co-authored "Our Memories of Islam: Reclaiming 'Muslim' and Redefining Faith" for an anthology of "Through Poetry, Prose, Photography: Muslim Women Redefine War" to be published in Winter 2005. Her comparative doctoral research between South East Asia (Malaysia) and the Arab world (Egypt) explores how Malay-Muslim women and Arab-Muslim women are repositioning themselves within their respective religion and culture through reinterpretation of religious text and rereading Arab-Islamic history and cultural traditions.

Bert Maria Cueva is currently working on non-traditional feminist research methods in Chicana and American Indian feminism(s). Her other research interests include: 1)the relational analysis of race in domestic and international policy, and, 2)feminist spirituality from an indigenous standpoint. This summer she presented a paper entitled "Feminist Methodological Resistance: Storytelling and the Narrative in Healing" at the University of San Antonio MALCS Conference (Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social).

Gwen D'Arcangelis spent the summer working at Diversity Works, an anti-oppression organization serving youth. She did experiential learning workshops on racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, sweatshops, environmental racism, consumerism, organic foods, and the like. She co-led the workshops on sexism and sweatshops. She was also responsible for organizing the Fourteenth Annual Graduate Student Research Conference: Thinking Gender, which was held at UCLA on March 5, 2004. She enjoys surfing and Tai-Chi.

Debbie Fliegelman gave birth to Sarah Moselle Fliegelman Sturgeon on August 3, 2003. After enjoying a quarter off, Debbie returned to campus last Winter.

Sharmila Lodhia recently defended her dissertation proposal and is currently collecting data for her research entitled, “Reimagining Gender, Culture and Violence in a Transnational Age: A Study of Law and Advocacy Responses to Domestic Violence Homicides in India and the U.S.”  She co-wrote an article with Sylvanna Falcon which was published in Meridians Vol. 3, Num. 1, entitled "Demanding the Right to Live without Violence: Reflections on Color of Violence II." She is currently writing a chapter of a report for the California Women's Law Center which examines legal and community responses to domestic violence homicides in a global perspective.  In the Fall she will be teaching a Race and Gender Seminar at Loyola Law School.

Stacy Macias  is entering her 2nd year as a Ph.D student in Women's Studies. After completing a third year as a Teaching Assistant in
Chicana/o Studies, she will be joining the staff of LGBT Studies as their Program Assistant. She spent the summer as a Graduate Summer Research Fellow at UCLA studying local and transnational organizing strategies by lesbians in Los Angeles and Mexico City. During the last academic year, she was a plenary speaker for the Chicana Caucus at the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies in Albuquerque, New Mexico and published the fourth edition of Tongues, a Queer women of color magazine.

Heather Masterton returned to UCLA last fall to pursue a Master's degree in the Women's Studies Program after receiving her Bachelor's degree in Women's Studies and Public Policy from UCLA in 2001. Her focus continues to be on domestic violence, a field she has worked and volunteered in for the last seven years in different areas of counseling, advocacy, legal services and research. In Fall 2003 she worked with Professor Alicia Gaspar De Alba in organizing the conference "The Maquiladora Murders, Or, Who is Killing the Women of Juarez?" She is currently in San Miguel de Allende completing a degree in Spanish and has already begun working on the development of a domestic violence education program for hospital staff, midwifes and outreach workers/advocates here. She is on the international board of CASA (el Centro para los Adolscentes de San Miguel de Allende) and will be organizing a walk against domestic violence there in January and domestic violence platicas (talks/presentations) for November (Mexico's No Violence month).

Jennifer Musto, a transplant from the midwest, has spent her first year at UCLA immersed in ideas while adjusting to the perpetually warm SoCal weather. Academically, she is in the process of developing ideas on feminist epistemologies, sexual difference theories, transnational feminist movements, ecofeminisms, and global sex trade industries and presented a paper at the Thinking Gender conference on Femmigration and Transgender Sex Work in the Netherlands.

Khanum Shaikh is currently teaching an Introduction to Women's Studies course at Cal-State Fullerton. She recently attended a National Incite Conference and participated in discussions on the topic of organizing from a woman of color perspective. She and Sharmila recently worked with other members of the Los Angeles Chapter of Incite in publishing a zine entitled "Speak Out: Women of Color Against Violence."

Sabah Uddin is a first year Ph.D. student in the Women's Studies Program. She recently moved to LA from Tampa, Florida, where she completed her Master's in Women's Studies at the University of South Florida. Her areas of interest include transnational feminisms, Islamic feminism as a framework for activism, and a focus on human rights violations against women in the Global South.

Anna Ward is entering her 2nd year as a Ph.D. student. She spent the summer as a graduate student researcher and working on her ongoing research regarding the representation of pleasure in film. Her research interests include queer theory, popular culture studies, and feminist political theory. She is originally from St. Louis, Missouri and blames this for her inability to successfully navigate Los Angeles traffic or understand the many layers of meaning behind Ugg boots.