The Spring 2020 Political Science senior capstone course will be an in-depth analysis of democratic representation, with a focus on the US Congress and the role of identity politics. In this course, we will analyze the concept of representation and explore how differing forms of representation serve to legitimize the democratically elected US government. This course will be run similar to a graduate seminar, with a great deal of reading and writing and an emphasis on producing the Political Science senior research paper. Students will gain a richer understanding of the theoretical and practical dimensions of liberal representation, the fundamental premise for a functional democracy. In the course, students will deepen their understanding of congressional decision-making and the impact of identity factors, such as gender, race, political party, and class for the substantive outcome of representation. Questions that guide the seminar will be: what counts as representation? Whose interests are best represented? Whose interests are underrepresented? Who defines a groups interests? How does this affect the quality of the US democracy? What are potential tactics to improve the democratic representation of marginalized populations? How does the US democracy allow for the representation of the interests of majority and minority factions? What are the strengths and weaknesses of these models? Students will be expected to conduct a significant final paper, drawing on original research and academic texts, and present their findings to the broader campus community on the Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Arts (URSCA) Presentation Day in the Spring.
- Teacher: Sara Angevine