String Theory Journal Club

There has been a lot of fruitful interaction in recent years between mathematics and quantum field theory, but also a lot of confusion on both sides. I'll try to explain how as a representation theorist with an occasional sidebar as a topologist, quantum field theory in low dimensions has proven useful for me, and how I hope to mathematics has some interesting things to say to quantum field theorists. In particular, 3 dimensional theories with N=4 supersymmetry prove to be a natural context for algebras which are non-commutative but almost commutative, such as universal enveloping algebras. There will be some results about relatively old areas like the representation theory of gl_n and newer ones like knot homology.