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These informal notes are an expanded version of lectures on the moduli space of elliptic curves given at Zhejiang University in July, 2008. Their goal is to introduce and motivate basic concepts and constructions (such as orbifolds and stacks) important in the study of moduli spaces of curves and abelian varieties through the example of elliptic curves. The reason for working with elliptic curves is that most constructions are elementary and explicit in this case. All four approaches to moduli spaces of curves -- complex analytic, topological, algebro-geometric, and number theoretic -- are considered. Topics covered reflect my own biases. Very little, if anything, in these notes is original, except perhaps the selection of topics and the point of view.