文革结束之后，美国文学教学与研究进入新的历史时期。从文学史、作品选读和文学批评理论等三个方面考查当时的高校美国文学教材，我们发现这些教材尽管在研究方法上有着共同的时代局限性，但其编写体例、作家作品选择以及评介等都表明，在高校学术体制重建和发展时期，美国文学教学正逐步摆脱旧的研究视角，自觉吸纳国外最新的学术成果，为未来美国文学研究人才的培养奠定了稳固的基础。

Since the end of the Cultural Revolution，the teaching and research of American literature had finally ushered in a new era in the 1980s as foreign languages education regained momentum in China． To meet the urgent need of English education at college，quite a few textbooks for American literature were published during this period，the representatives of which speak to a great extent for the contemporary Chinese scholarship in this field． Examining these representatives from the aspects of American literary history，selection of the works and literary criticism，we find that the Chinese teachers and scholars of American literature were trying to absorb the latest achievement of the relevant studies abroad while breaking away from the singular approach of the past． The teaching of American literature in Chinese colleges of the 1980s reflected the international trend of this field and therefore laid a good foundation for the future research．