Fall 2024 Capstones

Politics and Culture of the 1960s

POLS 492-001, Prof. Bradley Macdonald

At a time when the controversial decade of the 1960s is being widely reexamined, this seminar will illuminate fundamental experiences, sensibilities, and themes associated with this volatile and influential epoch. In particular, we will explore the nature and impact of such topics as the growth of affluence; the political struggles for African American equality and liberation; the Vietnam War; student radicalism; the counterculture; rock music; and, the incipient movements associated with women’s liberation, the New Right, and the ecology. Students will explore these issues by reading primary documents from the period, secondary sources on the period, and interpreting various mass media (music and films). As we will see, the 1960s provides a fertile ground from which to understand past and present developments in American politics, international relations, comparative politics, and political theory, and is a productive focus for applying our skills and knowledge developed as political science majors.

Risk and Environmental Policy

POLS 492-002, Prof. Ryan Scott

This capstone explores the concept of risk in environmental policy. Policymakers must constantly assess and prepare for a wide range of adverse events.

Students in this capstone will engage with theories of risk perception, practice risk analysis, and apply principles and methods of risk management to community issues. We will use local cases such as Poudre River flooding, Colorado drought planning, zoonotic disease, ozone management, and heat events to develop applied skills in using the concept of risk to inform community outcomes.

LGBTQ Politics

POLS 492-003, Prof. Courtenay Daum

This course will explore LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer) politics broadly-defined. We will begin with a historical review of social movement formation within LGBTQ communities in the U.S. during the mid-twentieth century and progress to a discussion of the current mobilization strategies and priorities for LGBTQ individuals in the twenty-first century. We will focus attention on 1) the antagonisms within the LGBTQ communities throughout the modern era, and 2) political strategies (ranging from protest to electoral politics and legal mobilization to policymaking). Topics to be covered include the politics of AIDS, marriage equality, workplace discrimination, and current debates about trans rights. 

Spring 2025 Capstones

The Politics of Public Policy

POLS 492-001, Prof. Clare Brock

One of the primary purposes of government is to serve the public good by developing and executing policies that benefit society. As students of public policy, we often advocate for evidence-based policy. However, the process of determining what is best for society – even what constitutes “evidence” – often generates debates and controversy. The give and take, bargaining, competition and compromise that arise from this process are called politics. All in all, The Politics of Public Policy is concerned with the ways in which politics advances, hinders, encumbers, enhances, or just plain screws up meaningful and necessary public policy.

The purpose of the class is threefold. First, the class provides a framework for analyzing and understanding the politics of public policy formation. Second, the course assesses the implementation of policy: How well are the policies working? Do they affect different groups of people differently? Third, the course provides you with the tools to allow you to analyze American public policy and politics more critically in your day-to-day life.

Just Transitions, Democracy, and Justice

492-002, Prof. Dimitris Stevis

What obligations, if any, do we have towards workers and communities that are affected by the closing of a coal plant any other major economic facility which provide employment and pay the taxes that fund schools and hospitals? What obligations do we have, if any, towards communities that host the least desirable and profitable components of the renewable energy or electric vehicle lifecycles? What are the implications of unjust transitions for democracy, justice and nature? These are the kinds of questions addressed by the strategy of Just Transition, a strategy that has become one of the most prominent and contested local, national and global issues over the last decade.

In this capstone seminar we will explore several questions through research on existing just transition policies and well-developed proposals.

• How can we differentiate amongst transitions in terms of their social and environmental impacts?
• How can we distinguish superficial uses of just transition from more transformative ones that address social and environmental injustice?
• What are the main approaches to just transition today, more than thirty years after the strategy was first proposed?
• What are some of the main examples of just transition policies, like the one in Colorado, and policy proposals?
• Is just transition limited to energy transitions or can it be applied to all transitions, whether due to social changes, automation, economic agreements, or disasters?
• What are the impacts of not addressing the impacts of transitions on democratic politics and systemic inequalities?

We will address these questions by carefully examining specific just transition policies and well-developed policy proposals. We will do so from the angle of the various stakeholders e.g., workers, the poor, communities, governments, corporations, environmentalists and others. Moreover, we will pay particular attention to the stakeholders involved across the value chains of the transitions proposed and not only where they are formally taking place.

While energy transitions will provide many of the cases you can also explore just transitions in any sector in which the strategy is being developed and seriously discussed.

The seminar is appropriate for students in all POLS concentrations, form the local to the global. The work for the seminar will be both individual and collaborative but it is structured in a manner that student evaluations are based on each person’s contribution and quality of work. We will also seek and create opportunities to present your work in public in an appropriate format that you are most comfortable with.

Love & Madness: From Politics to Metapolitics

POLS 492-003, Prof. David McIvor

We live in mad and maddening times. The political landscape is marked by conspiracy, invective, and uncertainty. Instead of finding the virtues of moderation, deliberation, and wisdom, we see discord and immoderation—in short, madness. 

Madness, however, also implies mutation, or transformation. In this capstone we will try to think beyond the standard descriptions of our contemporary political order, not by pushing its madness to the side but by exploring the potentials for transformation carried by that madness. Our first guide in this task will be the work of Norman O. Brown, a 20^th century thinker who argued that the task confronting modern humans is to shift from politics to metapolitics, or to rise “from history to mystery.” We will spend the first five weeks of the semester engaging in a close reading of Brown’s 1967 text Love’s Body. After that we will explore different ways of thinking about metapolitics, ranging from ecology to mythology and from spirituality to somatics. Assignments will consist of short reflections, group presentations and a creative project centered on the themes of the course. 

If you have questions, please contact the professor: david.mcivor@colostate.edu