In the face of a new urgency to address the (potential of) multiplicity in a post-pandemic United States that lays open deep societal divides, this special issue, edited by Matthias Klestil and Marijana Mikić, sets out to examine the United States through its versions. Versioning as a cultural practice of imagination and speculation shapes our perceived realities and can manifest through single works of art and their variants, across media, and in diverse discourses. What is the potential of (re-)thinking our objects of study through versions, versionality, and versional narration, if we take versioning as acts of reality-making, and explore such acts in relation to concepts of narrative, discourse, speculation? If we conceptualize versionality beyond the human, through environmental and material perspectives, or in relation to climate change? Or if we self-consciously theorize our activities as American studies scholars within (or as) versioning? Contributions in this issue explore the aesthetics, epistemologies, and politics of versioning.