Spring 2027

Prisons: From Antiquity to Supermax

Examines the development of prisons from the ancient Mediterranean world to the present in the US and Europe, focusing on imprisonment's use against marginalized populations and its legal limitations.

no offering record for this termCredits unavailable
Recorded instructors · Spring 2027 No instructors listed

Summary

1 / 4

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2025: 3.78 GPA, 94.3% A/AB (n=88 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.60 GPA, 98.0% A/AB (n=98 letter grades).

What you’ll be able to do

  • Analyze and articulate arguments about how social, political, and cultural phenomena shape law and legal systems, and in particular shape practices of imprisonment.

  • Analyze and articulate arguments about the impact of imprisonment on social practices and political organization.

  • Explain how legal ideas and ideologies have changed over time and have shaped law and legal systems.

  • Find, interpret, and utilize resources relevant to law and society.

  • Construct clear and persuasive arguments about legal systems and imprisonment.

Source: UW Guide 1 UW Guide 2

Grade history

↗
average GPA
letter grades
A
AB
B
BC
C
D
F

All recorded terms · compare terms & instructors

Prerequisites

Course map

None

  • None
HISTORY/LEGALST 235

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

Prerequisite text tree
  • None

Professors

Spring 2027

No instructors recorded for this selection.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

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

Calendar & sections

Spring 2027

Schedule loads here as you scroll.

SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist

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

Meeting source records
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Student experience

the class

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2025: 3.78 GPA, 94.3% A/AB (n=88 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.60 GPA, 98.0% A/AB (n=98 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

No workload feedback recorded.

Topics

  • Ancient political tactics and early modern debtors' prisons
  • Relationships between prisons/workhouses and capitalism, and colonial expansion
  • Mass incarceration, democratic government, and connections between slavery abolition and modern carceral practices
  • Legal and constitutional limitations on imprisonment in the American legal system
  • Use of imprisonment against marginalized populations

Skills

  • Analyzing and articulating arguments about how social, political, and cultural phenomena shape law and legal systems, specifically regarding imprisonment.
  • Analyzing and articulating arguments about the impact of imprisonment on social practices and political organization.
  • Explaining how legal ideas and ideologies have changed over time and shaped law and legal systems.
  • Finding, interpreting, and utilizing resources relevant to law and society.
  • Constructing clear and persuasive arguments about legal systems and imprisonment.

Grades

Latest available · Spring 2026— 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 Spring 2026

More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Spring 2026 · 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

1280 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

No offering records for the selected term.

Raw records 
[]
Rate My Professors

Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

Read original reviews

No records available.

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
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Full model traces

Recorded model configuration, reasoning, and tool conversations.

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Model & dataset provenance 
{
  "model": "Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B",
  "model_revision": "1d4bf0f2ff6012fd82039f2fa52739d0dd7c60c0",
  "task_version": "17",
  "output_id": "a49a8892b367ff098f36cb662c511d9abfdccb4f867d6d5be459f03659265bde",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}