Fall 2026

What Is Life? Biological Life in Literature and Culture

Explores representations of biological life in literature, science, film, and art, fostering interdisciplinary thinking.

no offering record for this termCredits unavailable
Recorded instructors · Fall 2026 No instructors listed

Summary

1 / 5

Historical reviews of Jan Miernowski: Students must read and understand substantial material to succeed on quizzes and essays. The workload is not trivial, though some find the professor makes the work engaging.

Grade history

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average GPA
letter grades
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Prerequisites

Course map

Sophomore standing

  • Sophomore standing
LITTRANS 302

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

Prerequisite text tree
  • Sophomore standing

Professors

Fall 2026

No instructors recorded for this selection.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

Historical reviews of Jan Miernowski: Jan Miernowski is praised as enthusiastic, caring, and generous, with lighthearted cold-calling and constructive feedback. Conversely, one reviewer criticizes his fast speaking, shaming behavior, unclear grading, and expectations for outside meetings.

JAN MIERNOWSKI is recorded teaching in Spring 2022. 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

Fall 2026

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SectionModeEnrolled / capacityWaitlist

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

Meeting source records

No records available.

Student experience

the class

Historical reviews of Jan Miernowski: Jan Miernowski is described as enthusiastic and caring, with students finding the class fun and interesting. One reviewer, however, reports a negative experience, citing unclear grading and poor teaching quality.

Recent recorded grades — Spring 2022: 3.76 GPA, 89.7% A/AB (n=97 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

Historical reviews of Jan Miernowski: Students must read and understand substantial material to succeed on quizzes and essays. The workload is not trivial, though some find the professor makes the work engaging.

Historical reviews of Jan Miernowski: Miernowski attempts to learn student names and uses daily cold-calling, which is generally described as lighthearted or in good fun. He provides constructive criticism, though one student reports a negative experience with unclear grading.

Topics

  • Conceptualizations of life: mechanism, rhythm, energy, force, death
  • Symbolic representations: metaphors, similes, fictions, pictorial forms
  • French, francophone, and Italian sources in translation

Skills

  • Interdisciplinary thinking bridging humanities and life sciences
  • Analysis of diverse conceptualizations of biological life

Grades

Latest available · Spring 2022— not enough history to project Fall 2026.

average GPA
A / AB grades
letter grades
Instructor

Grade distribution · % of letter grades

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AB
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BC
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More grade details Grade mix, volume & source data

Where this course fits relative to

Latest available grades · Spring 2022 · 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

1171 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 
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Student reviews

Original comments behind the course and instructor summaries.

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Madgrades

Grade history

Recorded grade distributions by term, section, and instructor.

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Dataset & model

Recorded 2026-09-07

View the dataset on Hugging Face
Model outputs & technical records
nvidia/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-NVFP4
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": "nvidia/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-NVFP4",
  "model_revision": "1355db6a052410cfd62085d94b58866fd0f2c3c5",
  "task_version": "14",
  "output_id": "a2b98ac10206ee872215c049ae143a60bb548f4b2e8637b3d1e26c33c4dbc15a",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "e243353dcb7d79b7247ced91d69443ef4c2a6349",
  "observed_at": "2026-09-07 15:55:43.033547+00:00"
}