The Literature and Languages Department offers three options for those whose primary interest is English. First is the traditional English major for which the culminating experience is the presentation of a Senior Seminar paper to a committee of peers and faculty. Second is a major in English for Corporate Communications (ECC), which requires numerous upper-level courses in literature and writing and 15 hours in General Business courses as well as an internship with a local business or non-profit organization as the culminating experience. Third is preparation for teaching English at the secondary level. English for Teaching Licensure includes 13 hours of enhanced student teaching as the culminating experience. For those majoring in other disciplines, the department offers a certificate in professional writing.

The department offers minors in English, French, and Spanish. In addition to a range of period courses in American and English literature, various genres, courses on individual writers, and upper level composition courses. In addition, faculty teach special topics courses, such as Detective Fiction, Literary Revision, C.S. Lewis, Rhetoric and Power, Dante, Baseball in Literature, Literary Nonfiction, Classics in Translation, the Contemporary Gothic Novel, Flannery O'Connor, the Vietnam War in Literature.

Many English majors and faculty are involved in English Club activities, which has sponsored events such as High Tea and participated in a marathon reading of John Milton's Paradise Lost. The department sponsors the English honor society, Sigma Tau Delta. Alumni of the department have entered law school and graduate programs in English and other fields at schools such as the University of Memphis, University of Tennessee, University of Mississippi, Carnegie-Mellon, Rutgers, Cumberland University, and Vanderbilt. Others work in the fields of education, publishing, library science, banking, marketing, technical writing, and service with non-profits such as ALSAC.