Schwab's Imaginary Ethnographies: Inspiring a Student's Wanderings through Familiar Literary Texts and the Development of New Subjectivities
Schwab's Imaginary Ethnographies: Inspiring a Student's Wanderings through Familiar Literary Texts and the Development of New Subjectivities

Summary/Abstract: When I first read the proposed theme for this issue and thought about Schwab's realizations about reading, and my own recent, driven rereading of Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos science fiction/fantasy series, set in the semi-fictional world of Dragaera. The questions that Schwab poses, and Schwab's experiences reading Buck's Peony, had me focused more than I normally would on why Brust's series is such a touchstone for me as a reader. Then, looking back outward to other readers, I wondered, how does reading, as a kind of dreaming, potentially change our views of self, and perhaps change how we interact with our "reality", our lived world, and what that could be? I have chosen to discuss the works of Steven Brust, who has not yet been a part of academic conversation, in the hopes of opening up those existing conversations to the many other creative works of speculative fiction.

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