The article is devoted to the problems of the modern process of teaching the history of foreign and domestic literature in universities. The problem is relevant in connection with the decline in the quality of teaching the history of literature. This paper aims to revise the established concepts and approaches in the compilation of curricula and lists of literary texts and substantiate fundamentally “new” approaches to the compilation of literature lists and the formation of a genre-thematic approach in the study of literature. The following methods were used in the work: analysis of documents (curricula, lists of literary texts, etc.), biographical and autobiographical methods, the method of expert assessments (involving the experience of domestic and foreign colleagues) and the statistical method. The author gave a partial solution to the posed questions. As the research results, the author planned to test and implement a new system for selecting texts, as well as their study in the practice of teaching the history of Russian and foreign literature.