The Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, attracting more than 600 undergraduate majors and 135 graduate students, offers the Bachelor of Arts degree as well as the Master of Arts in English, the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, and, in cooperation with the School of Mass Communications and the School of the Arts, the Doctor of Philosophy in Media, Art, and Text . The department also offers undergraduate minors in English, British Studies, Expository Writing, Creative Writing, and American Studies.  In addition, the department teaches several courses that are required by other programs across the university.  Last year, the department taught nearly 13,500 students in 459 classes.

The department is composed of thirty-six full-time faculty in all areas of English studies, a number of adjunct faculty with a broad spectrum of professional and academic experience, and thirty-seven graduate assistants in its MA, MFA and PhD programs.

The department has an interdisciplinary curriculum that includes writing, creative writing, literary studies, and cultural studies, and that offers courses cross-listed in a number of interdisciplinary programs: American Studies, African American Studies, Honors, Women's Studies, and Environmental Studies. In addition, the department collaborates with the Department of Sculpture to offer the Glasgow Artists and Writers Workshop every other summer in Glasgow, Scotland. Through the School of the Arts, the department offers English composition and general education literature courses with the Shaqab College of Design Arts in Doha, Qatar, and a summer program of study that takes visual artists and writers to Lima, Peru, as well as to Cuzco and the sacred city of Machu Picchu.

The department is home to the interdisciplinary scholarly annual Victorians Institute Journal, and to Blackbird : an on-line journal of literature and the arts.

~ 

News & Events

June-August, 2008
The Department of English is taking these summer months to prepare for another great academic year. The MA program looks forward to an incoming class of 15 new students, while both the national-ranked MFA program and the new PhD program in Media, Art & Text will have 8 and 13 additional students respectively. Winners of the annual Levis Reading Prize and First Novelist Award will soon be announced, and the Department's distinguished Visiting Writers Series for 08-09 will host readings by such acclaimed authors as Stuart Dybek, Ron Hansen, Victoria Chang, Bruce Beasley and others.

For a complete listing of past Department news and events click here.

                   Resumes Fall 2008