Most stars are born in clustered environments that are far denser than the Solar Neighborhood. Yet, star clusters can be hostile locations, where close stellar encounters can be frequent and can have violent consequences, including direct stellar collisions. Such encounters can dramatically alter stellar and planetary systems, and can produce exotic stars that define new pathways in stellar evolution. Understanding how, and to what extent, such "dynamically processing" occurs in star clusters may be critical for our understanding of the architectures of today’s observed stellar and planetary systems, as well as the origins of X-ray sources, blue stragglers, sub-subgiants, and other stellar exotica. In this talk, I will discuss the impacts of living in a star cluster on its inhabitants, beginning with a review of recent observational and theoretical efforts to study these complex systems. I will then focus on my own work to define empirically the solar-type binary stars in open clusters, and to study their evolution through sophisticated N-body dynamical models.