  These are introductory lectures on the correspondence between SU(N) gauge
theories and Superstring Theory in anti-de Sitter geometries (AdS). The subject
combines a number of different topics, including supersymmetric field theory,
classical and quantum physics of black holes, string theory, string dualities,
conformal field theories (CFT), and quantum field theory in anti-de Sitter
spaces. We also discuss applications of this AdS/CFT correspondence to the
large $N$ dynamics of pure QCD.
