Spring 2027

What Is Life? Biological Life in Literature and Culture

Explores representations of biological life in literature, science, film, and art with emphasis on French, francophone, and Italian sources studied in English.

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

Summary

1 / 6

Past student reviews · Jan Miernowski

The course required substantial reading comprehension and attention to lectures to succeed on quizzes and essays.

What you’ll be able to do

  • Identify problems that transcend disciplinary divides and learn how to think across disciplines of learning, namely life sciences, humanities and literature.

  • Identify key thinkers and artists associated with the course topic.

  • Recall facts and concepts pertaining to the cultural representations of biological.

  • Compare literary and artistic representations with scientific illustrations of concepts pertaining to biological life.

  • Interpret literary texts, films and artistic works in relation to the problem of organic life, through close reading and conceptual analysis.

  • Develop argumentation skills by discussing fundamental questions pertaining to organic life, based on an informed dialogue with thinkers and writers of the past and present.

  • Distinguish cultural premises of scientific problems through the critique of their literary, artistic and rhetorical formulations.

  • Demonstrate knowledge of fundamental conceptions of biological life in Western cultural tradition by writing a research paper (for Comm-B students: two research papers and three response papers).

  • Comm-B students: Create oral presentations and a creative project synthesizing knowledge about the course topic.

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

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

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

Spring 2027

No instructors recorded for this selection.

Historical instructors & teaching patterns

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

Spring 2027

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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

Past student reviews · Jan Miernowski

Students described the class as fun and interesting, noting that the instructor cared deeply about French literature and his students.

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

difficulty & workload

Past student reviews · Jan Miernowski

The course required substantial reading comprehension and attention to lectures to succeed on quizzes and essays.

Past student reviews · Jan Miernowski

Feedback was mixed on cold-calling; some found it lighthearted and encouraging, while others felt shamed when they did not know answers.

Topics

  • Conceptualizations of biological life including mechanism, movement, energy, force, and death
  • Attributes of biological life such as plasticity, limitedness, and self-consciousness
  • Cross-genre and cross-media analysis across different moments of cultural history

Skills

  • Interdisciplinary thinking bridging humanities and life sciences
  • Close reading and conceptual analysis of literary texts, films, and artistic works
  • Argumentation skills regarding fundamental questions of organic life

Grades

Latest available · Spring 2022— 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
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

1168 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 2026-10-14

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": "e4dc98e17c5162bc2c62e64637f6990cfc94477b95d1e265b4623b3b1f6ca397",
  "requirements_status": "valid",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}