MATH 7510: Berstein Seminar in Topology (Fall 2012)

Instructor: Martin Kassabov

This year the topic of the Berstein Seminar will be representation stability. This is recently developed notion about stablization of module of geometric origin. The course will start with background information in two different areas, the first one is the representation theory of symmetric (on other related) groups; and the second is a basic introduction to mapping class groups and automorphism groups of free groups. The goal will be to get a basic understanding of the material in the recent preprints about representation stability by T. Church, B. Farb and others (arXiv:1008.1368, arXiv:1204.4533).

As usual for the Berstein Seminar, the students will give most of lectures.