The primary emphasis of the lectures will be the study of non-perturbative regimes of string theory. The first lecture will be broad and at a general level, touching on a number of topics. The remaining lectures will be more detailed, exhibiting some key tools and phenomena which have formed the foundation for several recent advances in the field. Among these are D-branes, which will be studied from several points of view, leading to ideas such as strong/weak coupling dualities, open/closed dualities, holography, and gauge/gravity dualities. If time permits, the last lecture will discuss “minimal string theories”, which are simple but powerful exactly solvable systems which exhibit a range of key non-perturbative phenomena.
