K-Yo's answer got me moving in the right direction, but far short of success. Here is what I needed:
First in my .travis.yml: 
language: ruby
rvm:
  - 2.1.1
before_script:
  - psql -c 'create database spokenvote_test;' -U postgres
  - cp config/database.travis.yml config/database.yml
  - rake db:test_prep
  - npm install karma
  - npm install karma-jasmine
  - npm install karma-coverage
  - npm install karma-phantomjs-launcher
  - npm install karma-coffee-preprocessor
script:
  - bundle exec rspec spec # basic for ruby
  - node_modules/karma/bin/karma start config/karma.conf.js --single-run --browsers PhantomJS
Then I also placed this code in my package.json, though I'm not sure if it was needed:
"devDependencies": {
    "karma": "~0.12",
    "karma-jasmine": "~0.2",
    "karma-coverage": "~0.2.6",
    "karma-phantomjs-launcher": "~0.1.4",
    "karma-coffee-preprocessor": "~0.2.1"
},
Finally, I learned that Travis is case sensitive, so:
'bower_components/jquery/dist/jquery.min.js',
in my karma.conf.js needed to be:
'bower_components/jQuery/dist/jquery.min.js',