The Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University offers a program leading to the Bachelor of Arts in the College of Humanities and Sciences. In addition, the Department offers minors in English, writing, and American studies.

The Bachelor of Arts curriculum in English is designed to help students acquire an understanding of their literary heritage and its relationship to contemporary life, develop an appreciation and practical knowledge of the modes of literary expressions, and prepare them for advanced work in English language and literature.

Recently the Department of English refined its major so that students could build on the solid core of requirements and develop a concentration in some specific disciplinary or interdisciplinary area of English Studies. With requirements and the nine-hour optional concentration built into the major, students can focus on writing—both creative and professional—or on literature and culture, which would include multicultural American and world literatures in English, criticism and theory, cultural studies (courses that focus on literary representations of race, gender, and ethnicity, on literature and film, popular culture, etc), and linguistics.