Les Harrison, Ph.D.
Associate professor and chair

Gretchen Comba
Professor and associate chair

Indira Sultanić, Ph.D.
Assistant professor and associate chair of foreign languages

John Brinegar, Ph.D.
Associate professor and director of undergraduate studies

Jennifer Rhee, Ph.D.
Associate professor and director of the M.A. program

Kathleen Graber
Professor and director of the creative writing program

Mary Caton Lingold, Ph.D.
Associate professor and director of the MATX program

english.vcu.edu

The purpose of the Department of English, including the foreign language program, is to teach students to see their worlds with clarity and respond to them with sensitivity, through reading and writing. Students are invited to read and explore a diversity of texts created in different times and voices and then to respond to these texts variously and critically, situating them within their contexts and discerning their important aesthetic features, rhetorical elements and social functions.

Students in this department also are encouraged to express themselves in expository or imaginative works that engage thought and feeling, evince purpose clearly, marshal appropriate evidence and observe principles of rhetorical decorum.

The Department of English offers a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Bachelor of Arts in Foreign Language with a concentration in Spanish. It also offers minors in American studies, British studies, English (for non-English majors), creative writing, professional writing and editing, French and French studies, German studies, Italian studies, Latin American studies, Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, Russian studies, Spanish, and Spanish and Health Sciences. The department offers a Master of Arts in English and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, and a doctoral program leading to a Ph.D. in Media, Art and Text. Use the program index links to view individual program descriptions and curricula, or visit the department’s website for additional information.

Foreign language courses

Students planning to take a foreign language course at VCU must take the placement test in order to determine proper course selection. Specific information about the placement test is available on the department website. Placement scores determine at which skill level the students begin course work in the respective language. Students who test above a specific course level continue with higher level courses to fulfill degree or graduation requirements. 

Students transferring in credit for foreign language course work may continue taking courses at the respective VCU skill level without taking a placement test. Skill level progression is still required and upheld. Students who transfer in credits at a specific course level continue at that level or at a higher level to fulfill degree or graduation requirements. 

Students are required to consecutively complete 101, 102 (beginning), 201, and 202 or 205 (intermediate) levels, or be waived through placement or earned transfer credit. Once a student has reached the 300 level, they are expected to progress through 300-level course work or higher. Registering into a lower level once that skill level has been met is not possible.

Foreign language requirement and native speaker information

Students in some majors within the College of Humanities and Sciences are required to meet a foreign language requirement either through the 102 level or through a higher level as specified by the individual program. Specific information on assessment to waive the foreign language requirement is available on the department website.