  We study modulational instability (MI) of plane waves in nonlocal nonlinear
Kerr media. For a focusing nonlinearity we show that, although the nonlocality
tends to suppress MI, it can never remove it completely, irrespectively of the
particular profile of the nonlocal response function. For a defocusing
nonlinearity the stability properties depend sensitively on the response
function profile: for a smooth profile (e.g., a Gaussian) plane waves are
always stable, but MI may occur for a rectangular response. We also find that
the reduced model for a weak nonlocality predicts MI in defocusing media for
arbitrary response profiles, as long as the intensity exceeds a certain
critical value. However, it appears that this regime of MI is beyond the
validity of the reduced model, if it is to represent the weakly nonlocal limit
of a general nonlocal nonlinearity, as in optics and the theory of
Bose-Einstein condensates.
