This course is a seminar cross-listed with the History Department graduate program. The core issue is how to assess individual responsibility in the context of state-sponsored mass atrocity. Genocide is not the work of individual perpetrators acting independently but is rather the product of a systematic and highly organized attempt to exterminate a particular group of human beings. A wide variety of governmental and non-governmental organizations and institutions typically contribute to the planning and implementation of a genocide and individuals often try to hide behind the anonymity and fragmented responsibility of bureaucratic hierarchies. Yet ultimately it is the actions of discrete individuals, from the direct perpetrator who pulls a trigger or wields a machete to the bureaucratic functionary who may be far removed from scenes of death and violence, that are responsible for implementing the genocide policies formulated by national leaders. We will consider a series of readings that examine the tension between the roles of individuals and the collective action that makes genocide possible. These include key cases that from WWII to today that have defined the contours of individual responsibility as well as books that consider the nature of responsibility in complex organizations and the motivations and conduct of individuals who participate in mass murder.