Stephen Hock (Batten University)
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Ryan Ruby’s “Post-American Blues” argues that Thomas Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket, with its references to “post-American life,” evokes a condition that “started to become thinkable in the second decade of the twenty-first century,” signifying “a change in the national character resulting from the cancellation of the twentieth century.” As the project of canceling the twentieth century continues into 2026, now seems an appropriate time to consider the “post-American” in terms of this year’s SAMLA Conference theme of hospitality, by examining texts that speak to the emergence of “post-American” forms of hospitality through figures of displacement, exile, and immigration in “post-American life.”

Late in Thomas Pynchon’s 2025 novel Shadow Ticket, which is set in the 1930s, we read of protagonist Hicks McTaggart’s longing to be “restored to normal life, to a country not yet gone Fascist, a place of clarity and safety, still snoozy and safe.” Slide Gearheart then describes this desire to Hicks as a “well-known condition,” offering the explanation-cum-warning, “you might call it post-American, some choose it deliberately, some not, but whatever it is you’re headed for it, and on the express track too, allow me to point out.” Later, when Hicks faces exile from the United States, Pynchon’s narration recalls this conversation as Hicks contemplates “the first day of a post-American life.” Ryan Ruby highlights this element of Shadow Ticket in his New Left Review essay “Post-American Blues,” where he argues that the novel presents “the United States having become the producer of exiles, rather than the recipient of them.” For Ruby, the “post-American life” that Hicks finds himself living is a condition that, in the world we inhabit, “started to become thinkable in the second decade of the twenty-first century,” one that signifies “a change in the national character resulting from the cancellation of the twentieth century.” As the political project of canceling the twentieth century continues apace in the United States of 2026, now seems an appropriate time to consider the question of the “post-American” as it pertains to this year’s SAMLA Conference theme of hospitality.

Proposals are invited for papers addressing contemporary literary, cinematic, or other texts that speak to the emergence of “post-American” forms of hospitality, or its opposite, inhospitality. Subjects might include (but are not limited to):

· Figures of displacement and exile in “post-American life.”

· Representation of “post-American” immigrant and refugee experiences.

· “Post-American” concepts of nationhood and national identity.

Please submit proposals through SAMLA’s Ballast site at samla.ballastacademic.com by September 1. For more information, please contact Stephen Hock at shock@vwu.edu.