Quarks and the Nuclear Medium

Is a nucleon bound in a nucleus the same as a free nucleon, and if not, in what way has it changed? Answering these questions is a key step toward understanding how the quarks and gluons of QCD bind together to form nucleons and ultimately nuclei. We will discuss a number of important experiments that have shed light on the quark structure of the nucleus, for example, the EMC (CERN 1982) and NuTeV (Fermilab 2002) experiments. However, our main focus will be to discern - from a theoretical standpoint - how the quarks in a bound nucleon respond to the nuclear environment, whcih is essential if one is to understand nuclear structure from a QCD perspective.