This proceedings volume reflects the 2001 Ahlfors-Bers Colloquium held at the University of Connecticut (Storrs). This conference began nearly a half century ago with a tradition based on profound mathematics, wide-ranging interests, personal involvement, and scholarship. Once led by Lipman Bers and Lars Ahlfors, the core of this tradition unfolded around geometric function theory. Talks at the colloquium were devoted to various aspects of complex analysis, including Teichmuller spaces, quasiconformal mappings, and geometric function theory. The book is suitable for graduate students and researchers interested in complex analysis.