In the last decade, public monuments have inspired numerous debates and protests both in the United States and around the world. While controversies have always attended efforts to immortalize the past, the tensions of the current moment nevertheless raise a host of questions which demand a careful (re-)consideration of the history and meaning of public memory in the modern era. To begin, what is public memory, and whose memory is it? How does a memorial come to be, or, in many cases, come to be relocated? What purposes do memorials serve? Have their purposes changed over time, and do we even need them in the 21st century? In pursuit of answers to these, and other, questions, the course examines a variety of memorial landscapes in and beyond the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the process, it explores how and why local and national communities have remembered and still remember particular historical events and figures in public spaces. Moreover, it reflects upon the ways in which the commemoration of specific events and people often entails the forgetting, or erasure, of others. Finally, the course studies the logistical, societal, and emotional conventions through which monuments are created and, in some cases, altered or removed over time.