| Abstract: Schubert varieties can be thought of as subvarieties of Grassmannians with a prescribed number of intersections with a flag manifold (and are usually singular.) Chern-Schwartz-MacPherson(CSM) classes are characteristic classes that are defined for singular varieties and agree with Chern classes for nonsingular varieties. A method of calculation of CSM classes based on a paper by P. Aluffi and L. Mihalcea will be discussed as will applications to a positivity conjecture about CSM classes of Schubert varieties. |