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．