Spring 2027

Literature and Medicine

Literature and Medicine explores literature as a source of knowledge about medicine and a catalyst for reflection on medical concepts like health, illness, dying, and disability.

offering recorded3 credits
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 Colin Gillis4.1/5

Summary

1 / 6

Past student reviews · Colin Gillis

The course included readings that students described as interesting and easy, with exams considered manageable if students paid attention to lectures.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Identify some of the ways literature addresses medical concepts and practices, including health, illness, dying and disability.

  • Identify ways that literature can serve as a resource for patients and healthcare practitioners.

  • Identify and apply methods and approaches for analysis of literary and cultural texts to demonstrate literature's contemporary and historical relevance.

  • Analyze relationships among society, literature, and language that underlie the construction of beliefs.

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

↗
average GPA
letter grades
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AB
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All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

None

  • None
ENGL 156

This is a best-effort interpretation; check the catalog requirements above.

Prerequisite text tree
  • None

Professors

Spring 2027

Colin Gillis

Adjusted rating
RMP difficulty
captured reviews
About this rating

Raw average: 4.80/5 from 15 quality ratings. The adjusted rating blends this with the UW review average (3.66/5), weighted as 20 additional ratings. Smaller samples stay closer to that average. Each captured review is counted once in the prior; this does not correct who chooses to leave a review.

For this course: 5.0/5 raw quality · 2.0/5 difficulty · 2 reviews

RMP profile ↗ · All captured review dates; profile matched by name.

Past student reviews · Colin Gillis

Professor Colin Gillis led well-organized lectures that students found engaging and passionate. The course included relevant required readings that facilitated interesting discussions, and exams were described as manageable if students attended class and completed the assigned texts.

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2024: 3.83 GPA, 96.7% A/AB (n=30 letter grades); Spring 2025: 4.00 GPA, 100.0% A/AB (n=26 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.89 GPA, 96.3% A/AB (n=27 letter grades).

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

Past student reviews · Sunny Yudkoff

Professor Sunny Yudkoff taught this literature course with a workload including lengthy readings, weekly quizzes, and three exams where the lowest score was dropped. She assigned three papers, often with increasing weight, which students described as fair and interesting. Yudkoff was praised for organized, relevant lectures and a reasonable grading approach, making the class manageable for those who completed the required readings.

COLIN GILLIS is recorded teaching in Spring 2020, Fall 2020, Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2023, Spring 2024, Fall 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

SUNNY YUDKOFF is recorded teaching in Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2020. Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Recorded history may be incomplete and does not establish a future schedule.

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist
LEC 001Classroom Instruction0 / 300

Times are Central. Select a meeting for details; export includes recorded dates for the selected sections. Enrollment reflects scan time.

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Past student reviews · Colin Gillis

Students found Professor Gillis's lectures engaging and well-organized, noting his visible passion for the topics made the class interesting.

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2024: 3.83 GPA, 96.7% A/AB (n=30 letter grades); Spring 2025: 3.92 GPA, 96.1% A/AB (n=76 letter grades); Fall 2025: 3.81 GPA, 94.6% A/AB (n=56 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Past student reviews · Colin Gillis

The course included readings that students described as interesting and easy, with exams considered manageable if students paid attention to lectures.

Past student reviews · Colin Gillis

Required books were viewed as relevant to the material, helping to make class discussions more interesting for students.

Topics

  • Health, illness, dying, and disability
  • Literature as a resource for patients and healthcare practitioners
  • Relationships among society, literature, and language

Skills

  • Identify how literature addresses medical concepts and practices.
  • Apply methods and approaches for analysis of literary and cultural texts.
  • Analyze relationships among society, literature, and language.

Grades

Latest available · Fall 2025— not enough history to project Spring 2027.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

Grades over time

Through Fall 2025

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Fall 2025 · all course levels

GPA

Higher than % of other courses in this group.

Course GPAs · red marks this course’s range

letter grades

More recorded grades than % of other courses in this group.

Typical course in this group: letter grades.

About this comparison

1316 courses over the same term, each with at least 30 recorded letter grades. Cross-listed courses count once. GPA is not a measure of difficulty or teaching quality. The typical course is the median by recorded grade count; tied values are not counted as lower. Grade counts describe course scale, not unique students or typical section size.

Descriptions compare GPA with this group’s average: at least 0.20 higher or lower; otherwise close to average. Section size uses median recorded enrollment: small up to 30, mid-sized 31–99, large 100+. Lectures and discussion/lab sections are described separately.

Sources & history

UW–Madison

Catalog & offerings

Descriptions, prerequisites, and recorded course offerings.

Catalog observation history

Observations at scan time; dates do not imply when a catalog change took effect.

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Selected offering source records
ENGL 156 · Spring 2027

Literature and Medicine

Recorded 2026-10-14
Raw records 
[
  {
    "run_id": "20261014T203208-0851c9a1",
    "semester": "1274",
    "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00",
    "offering_id": "1274:352:024756",
    "course_id": "ENGL 156",
    "course_uid": "course_8ce2985010ab9214eaca4dcf",
    "term_id": "1274",
    "source_course_id": "024756",
    "source_subject_id": "352",
    "title": "Literature and Medicine",
    "credits_min": 3,
    "credits_max": 3,
    "typically_offered": "Fall, Spring"
  }
]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews
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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

Explore recorded grades
Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-10-14

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
LLM outputs across runs
Download part 1
Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

Download part 1
Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "3f7670e4ff27b6c1b5d137877cf7693f988c20c5865762636bd39032c6d868e9",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}