LECTURES ON (2+1)-DIMENSIONAL GRAVITY

These lectures briefly review our current understanding of classical a nd quantum gravity in three spacetime dimensions, concentrating on the quantum mechanics of closed universes and the (2+1)-dimensional black hole. Three formulations of the classical theory and three approaches to quantization are discussed in some detail, and a number of other a pproaches are summarized. An extensive, although by no means complete, list of references is included.