The English Department's offerings in literary study include the full range of English and American literature, as well as other literature in English, comparative literature, literature in translation, and the English Bible. Literary study is, for the most part, inseparable from cultural study, since English faculty teach and write about texts in their sociocultural contexts, using a variety of theoretical and methodological tools. Most literary study in the Department is "interdisciplinary," examining canonical and non-canonical writing in relation to, for example, historical, philosophical, sociological, and psychological knowledge. In their writing and teaching, English faculty make use of methods and insights associated with cultural studies (broadly conceived), feminism, psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and "queer theory."

On both the undergraduate and graduate levels, the program is designed to expose literature students not only to the chronological range of English and American texts and to minority (especially African American) literature, but also to the literary and cultural theories and methodologies that make possible the most challenging and sophisticated forms of interpretation.

The literature faculty includes internationally known scholars representing a variety of interpretive practices in a wide range of fields.

Research and teaching in literary and cultural studies are central to the English Department, forming the foundation of the English B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees. Literary and cultural studies courses serve to fulfill general education requirements and requirements in the College of Education. In addition undergraduate and graduate literary and cultural studies courses in English are regularly cross-listed with courses in African-American Studies, American Studies, Comparative Literature, Religious Studies, and Women's Studies. Literary and cultural studies faculty members are extraordinarily productive. While the faculty arguably has its greatest strength in the early modern period, the Department has faculty members with national and international reputations in every period of English and American literature and culture.

As faculty strengths and current course offerings suggest, much of the Department's teaching in literary and cultural studies is done in the traditional frame of historical periodization. Over the past several years, however, the discipline's structure has been changing, moving away from such typical periodization to a concern with issues relating literature and culture to broader social, political, economic, scientific, and technological contexts. This process of change has impacted the Department's research profile, in keeping with the scholarly interests of individual faculty members and with developments in the field of English Studies across the country. Just as the notion of the “text” has changed from its narrowly linguistic meaning to include other forms of representation such as the cinematic, architectural, and graphic, so methods of interpreting such texts call for new literacies or ways of “reading” a variety of texts. Also emerging areas of study such as postcolonialism , science and technology studies, electronic textuality, and gender studies call for new theoretical models.

To accommodate these transformations in the field of literary and cultural studies, the English Department plans to alter the taxonomy or grouping of its curriculum. One way to begin to broaden the concept of literary studies is to move from the nation-based concept of English and American Literature to a more overarching description like “Literatures in English,” which would encourage attention to comparative, transnational literatures, including practices and discourses that go beyond the traditional British and American boundaries. Increasingly influential multicultural and postcolonial approaches to literary studies call attention to minority and marginalized literatures within nations, as well as to the English-language literature of the Asian subcontinent and the Pacific. New groupings of courses and areas of study could take several forms. Whereas the interpretation of texts would continue to be historical, theoretical, and semiotic in character, traditional periodization might be more broadly conceived. New generic and other concentrations or clusters of curriculum offerings have already been proposed and could be rationalized for clarifying what is expected of English undergraduate majors and graduate students.

Literary and cultural studies faculty will be at the center of the English Department's reconfiguration of its graduate and undergraduate curricula. Proposals for the English major include a specific concentration in literary and cultural studies, as well as a concentration in visual media and culture. At the graduate level, literary and cultural studies faculty will take the lead in rethinking the curriculum, the exam structure, and distribution requirements for doctoral and masters students