At the publication of Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel "Lolita" (1958), the author insisted that a girl never appear on the cover. This discourse analysis of 185 "Lolita" book covers, most of which feature a girl, considers the genealogy of "Lolita" in relation to representation, myth, and tacit knowledge…

Advocates of narrative research often contend that it is superior to nonnarrative research, both qualitative and quantitative, because they believe it is better able to represent multiple perspectives and foster multiple interpretations. The author of this comment article on Coulter and Smith (2009) draws on literary theory and an analysis of the…

This essay explains the relevance of fiction to the practice of rural education research, in so doing engaging questions about the nature and purposes of research and, therefore, of science itself. Although many may assume science and fiction (in this account, novels) harbor contrary purposes and devices, this essay argues that, to the contrary,…

This essay explains the relevance of critique in rural education to novels about rural places. The most important quoted passage in the essay is from the noted physicist Richard Feynman: "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." Novelist-physicist C. P. Snow, historian Henry Adams, and poet and student-of-mathematics Kelly Cherry also…

Regional novels constitute an important component for research in rural education because they deal with relationships between people and place and with the impact of schooling on human life. Selected incidents from Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1960) and LaFarge's "Laughing Boy" (1929) are congruent with contemporary research…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 25 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the integrated short story collection as a genre; (2) lyric definition; (3) trope density in Newbery Award winning books and selected Children's Choices from…