Spring 2027

The Foundations of American Liberal Democracy

Explores the intellectual origins and evolution of American political thought from the Puritans to the Civil War through politicians, novelists, and social critics, analyzing central tensions from a contemporary perspective.

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

Summary

1 / 5

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2021: 3.04 GPA, 46.2% A/AB (n=26 letter grades); Fall 2024: 3.44 GPA, 77.8% A/AB (n=45 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.62 GPA, 91.7% A/AB (n=36 letter grades).

What you’ll be able to do

  • Examine the intellectual origins and evolution of American political thought.

  • Explore American political thought as seen through the lens of leading politicians, novelists and social critics from the Puritans to the Civil War.

  • Analyze the central tensions of American political thought from a contemporary perspective.

  • Assess the state of a body of scholarly literature related to course themes, identify gaps in that literature, and formulate an original research question in the context of those gaps.

Source: UW Guide

Grade history

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

Prerequisites

Course map

(POLI SCI 160, 209, 210, or ILS 205) or graduate/professional standing

POLISCI 360

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

Prerequisite text tree

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

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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
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Student experience

the class

Recent recorded grades — Fall 2021: 3.04 GPA, 46.2% A/AB (n=26 letter grades); Fall 2024: 3.44 GPA, 77.8% A/AB (n=45 letter grades); Spring 2026: 3.62 GPA, 91.7% A/AB (n=36 letter grades).

difficulty & workload

No workload feedback recorded.

Topics

  • Intellectual origins and evolution of American political thought.
  • Perspectives of leading politicians, novelists, and social critics from the Puritans to the Civil War.
  • Central tensions of American political thought from a contemporary perspective.

Skills

  • Examining and analyzing the origins, evolution, and central tensions of American political thought.
  • Assessing scholarly literature, identifying gaps, and formulating original research questions.

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.

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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": "8c579fc3e7082cb9e7ce36d4cdca914c14461b44dda2fff49b8a4c353c940822",
  "requirements_status": "needs_review",
  "dataset_revision": "fc1811fa52e581ea57a35c0cf3343f8740a8ffbf",
  "observed_at": "2026-10-14 17:50:09.728220+00:00"
}