Course info for Math 697 (Topics in Topology: Moduli of Curves) is available here, including the current office hours schedule (M 12-1pm in EH 3842, W 8-9pm on Zoom (details in link above), F 2-3pm in EH 3842).

As the semester progresses, I will post references and scheduling notes here. There will also be 3 problem sets posted here (will be graded fairly informally).

Problem Set 1 (solutions)
Problem Set 2 (due Tuesday, Nov 29, by e-mail to me at pixton@umich.edu)
Problem Set 3 (due Thursday, Dec 8, by e-mail to me at pixton@umich.edu)

Rough schedule and references:
Teichmuller theory (Sep 1, Sep 6, Sep 8, Sep 13): some possible references: Curt McMullen's notes (sections 3 and 4), Izzet Coskun's notes (section 1), A Primer on Mapping Class Groups by Benson Farb and Dan Margalit (part 2)
The mapping class group and its cohomology (Sep 15, Sep 20, Sep 22, Sep 27, Sep 29, Oct 4): main reference is A Primer on Mapping Class Groups, also some papers of Harer (e.g. Harer-Zagier)
Algebraic curves and the algebraic construction of M_g (Oct 6, Oct 11, Oct 13, Oct 20, Oct 25, Oct 27): some of the stuff I'm doing is fairly standard algebraic geometry, but for moduli stuff one reference is Moduli of Curves by Joe Harris and Ian Morrison (chapters 1,2,4)
Moduli of stable curves (Nov 1, Nov 3, Nov 8): I like pages 6-9 of this article by Ravi Vakil as an informal introduction here; the book of Harris and Morrison mentioned above has many more details, most of which we will not need
Tropical geometry (Nov 8, ...): two introductions to tropical geometry and tropical curves are this article by Diane Maclagan and minicourse notes by Renzo Cavalieri (sections 1-4), while one of our eventual goals is to understand some of the work of Chan-Galatius-Payne, e.g. paper 1, paper 2, paper 3