  We study N=1 supersymmetric U(N) gauge theories coupled to an adjoint chiral
field with superpotential. We consider the full supersymmetric moduli space of
these theories obtained by adding all allowed chiral operators. These include
higher-dimensional operators that introduce a field-dependence for the gauge
coupling. We show how Feynman diagram/matrix model/string theoretic techniques
can all be used to compute the IR glueball superpotential. Moreover, in the
limit of turning off the superpotential, this leads to a deformation of N=2
Seiberg-Witten theory. In the case where the superpotential drives the squared
gauge coupling to a negative value, we find that supersymmetry is spontaneously
broken, which can be viewed as a novel mechanism for breaking supersymmetry. We
propose a new duality between a class of N=1 supersymmetric U(N) gauge theories
with field-dependent gauge couplings and a class of U(N) gauge theories where
supersymmetry is softly broken by nonzero expectation values for auxiliary
components of spurion superfields.
