Central to the religious experience of people around the globe have been sacred places -- to visit, to pray towards, to imagine, and even to reproduce in miniature. How do we make sense of sacred space as a basic feature of religions? Why do people "need" such places to focus their religious practices, and in how many different forms do we find them? This course will introduce a comparative approach to sacred space, pilgrimage, and the various forms these have taken across cultures and through time, from the Muslim Hajj to Catholic pilgrimages to Padre Pio, to ancient visits to holy men. News accounts, ethnographies, and films illustrating both international pilgrimages and local shrines will complement various readings in the anthropology of pilgrimage and the interpretation of sacred space. We will also address such topics as miraculous apparitions, tourism as pilgrimage, and "Jerusalem syndrome." The course will culminate in an independent research paper.