Julia Banzi is a third year graduate student in the field of Ethnomusicology. She presented a paper entitled “Andalusian Women's Or-chestras: an Unveiled Face” at Toronto 2000 - Musical Intersections. She performed and lectured at the Tangier American Legation Museum in Tangier, Morocco in Aug. 2000.

Stephen Cory is conducting dissertation research in Rabat, Morocco on a Fulbright fellowship. His dissertation is entitled Chosen by God to Rule: Messianic Islam and Political Legitimacy in Early Modern Morocco. It is a study of the 16th-century Moroccan sultan, Ahmed al-Mansur al-Dhahabi.

CMES Iftar

David Crawford is completing his dissertation “Configuring Identity in the Moroccan High Atlas” and is currently a visiting researcher at the London School of Economics Dept. of Anthropology. His essay “How Berber Matters in the Middle of Nowhere” won the MERIP Phillip Shehadi New Writers Award for 2000.

Nancy Currey is spending a third year in Damascus, Syria on a Fulbright-Hays dissertation grant. She is conducting filed research on the role of turath (classical) music in contemporary Syrian society.

Angelica DeAngel is completing her dissertation entitled “Constructions of Moroccan Women's Identities in French and Arabic Literature and Cinema.” She delivered a paper at MESA 2000 on Rai music, cinema, and literature in North Africa and diaspora communities.

Huda Jadallah is a grad student in the Sociology Dept. who has just completed her M.A. thesis entitled “Queer Arab Women in the US: Struggles with Honor and Shame.”

Linda Jones has received grants from the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council-International, and Fulbright-Hays to conduct dissertation research in Spain and Morocco on the roles of canonical and popular preaching in the process of building Muslim and Catholic cultural identities in Medieval Iberia.

Sophia Shehadeh

Sophia Shehadeh is currently a second-year graduate student in the Dept. of Religious Studies and is planning to write her dissertation on women and religion in Yemen. She spent the summer of 2000 in Yemen studying Arabic as well as volunteering at the Yemeni National Women's Committee.

Mark Soileau has lived for seven years in Turkey researching the religious practices of the Bektashis and Alevis. He is currently a second-year grad student in Religious Studies writing an MA thesis on the Bektashi ritual meal. His dissertation research will be on the relationship between ethnic/religious identity and shrine pilgrimages in Turkey and Turkmenistan.

Nancy Stockdale filed her history dissertation in Fall 2000 entitled “Gender and Colonialism in Palestine 1800-1948: Encounters Among English, Arab, and Jewish Women. She has received a UC Faculty Fellowship Post Doc in the History Dept.

Amy Cyr and Michelle Zimney

Michelle Zimney in fall 2000 returned from a year living in Cairo and studying Arabic at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA). She is teaching second and third year Arabic as well as preparing for her doctoral exams. Her dissertation research will be on violence in Algeria, its victims, and resultant refugee communities in North Africa.