This course explores the role of memory as a social, cultural, and political force in contemporary society. Nations rely on memories, yet memory of the past is a deeply conflicted component of modern national identity (as evidenced not least by the recent confederate monument debate in the US). In this class we examine the constitutive tension between memory as a national political project and as an intimate source of identity for individuals in communities. It looks specifically at how memory travels across generations and geographies in a world increasingly defined by the uneven movement of people and information, and how the lived realities of migration and diaspora, transnationalism, and globalization continuously challenge the “container” of national memory. The class begins with questions about our contemporary relation to the past in response to historical and conceptual shifts, and moves to explore the complexity of the mnemonic communities in whose name social remembering takes place and the politics of memory today. We look at empirical cases from around the world, including the memorialization of controversial events outside the home country, the deployment of collective memory in national discourses to frame refugee crises and migrant deaths, slavery, and the growing tension between the national and the transnational in dealing with dislocated memories. Cases include the war in Vietnam, slavery and its legacy in the United States, the memory of World War II in East Asia, Turkish migration and Holocaust memory in Germany, Mexican migrants to the US, among others. Despite the wide-ranging cases, this course is not a comprehensive survey or history, but rather an exploration of conceptual tools and approaches that students can use in their own research.