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Books in Arts and humanities

Elsevier's Arts and Humanities titles encompass a rich spectrum of scholarship that explores human culture, history, philosophy, and creative expression. These works offer deep insights into language, literature, visual arts, and critical theory, supporting the academic community in understanding diverse perspectives and cultural legacies. Designed for scholars, educators, and students, this collection bridges classic studies with contemporary issues, fostering a deeper appreciation and knowledge of the human experience.

  • Language Use and School Performance

    • 1st Edition
    • May 10, 2014
    • Aaron V. Cicourel + 2 more
    • English
    Language Use and School Performance presents the results of a study undertaken during 1969-1970 to investigate the link between language use and school performance. A basic theme of this report is that early school experience is probably the most important stage in a child's educational career. The emphasis is on the acquisition and use of language at home and in the primary school. Comprised of seven chapters, this book seeks to clarify everyday school decisions made by school personnel based on the child's performances in particular classroom and testing situations that influence his/her educational career early in life. The discussion begins by focusing on the placement of students in two kindergarten classes in two southern California school districts. More specifically, the chapter examines the practices used by teachers to assign students to classes having particular characteristics; to place them in ability groups within classes; and to promote them to the next grade. Subsequent chapters explore how teachers accomplish classroom lessons; intelligence testing as a social activity; standardized tests as objective/objectifie... measures of a child's "competence" in school; and tests and experiments with children. The final chapter outlines some basic theoretical issues in the assessment of the child's performance in testing and classroom settings. This monograph will be a valuable resource for educators, sociologists, and psychologists.
  • The Quaternary of Israel

    • 1st Edition
    • May 10, 2014
    • Aharon Horowitz
    • English
    The Quaternary of Israel presents the ensuing synthesis of the development of Israel during the Quaternary, with its implication with human life and paleoenvironments. This book discusses Israel as the key area for the connection of the African and European Quaternary sequences, which bear prime significance for the problems of human evolution, settlement, and migration. Organized into nine chapters, this book begins with an overview of the environments, the pre-Quaternary geology, and the structural evolution of the region. This text then examines the sedimentary sequence and erosional processes that influenced Israel during the Quaternary. Other chapters consider the pollen spectra of Israel as representative of vegetation, climatic conditions, and processes of transport and deposition. This book discusses as well the major descriptive reports to anthropological material uncovered in Israel and explores the significance of these discoveries. The final chapter deals with the paleoclimatic, paleogeographic, and environmental development of Israel in connection with human settlement. This book is a valuable resource for anthropologists and geologists.
  • The Cannon Reservoir Human Ecology Project

    An Archaeological Study of Cultural Adaptations in the Southern Prairie Peninsula
    • 1st Edition
    • May 10, 2014
    • Michael J. O'Brien + 2 more
    • English
    The Cannon Reservoir Human Ecology Project: An Archaeological Study of Cultural Adaptations in the Southern Prairie Peninsula provides an overview of the Cannon Reservoir Human Ecology Project, formed in May 1977 as an interdisciplinary, regional archaeology program to investigate human adaptations on the southern fringes of the mid-continental Prairie Peninsula. The research centered on the area of northeastern Missouri in and around the site of the proposed Clarence Cannon Dam and Reservoir. The book demonstrates how objectives and goals have been integrated with various methods and techniques to generate and analyze a vast amount of data in a regional archaeological project. Comprised of 18 chapters, this book first defines the objectives and goals of the project, describes the project area, and discusses the research design. A brief history of archaeological work in the region is also presented. The next section assesses the environment and implications for human settlement in the area, citing various physical and cultural changes that occurred during the Holocene and presenting developmental models of prehistoric and historical settlement systems. Subsequent chapters explore the chronology of the project area; analysis of lithic artifacts and vertebrate and archaeobotanical remains; prehistoric community patterns; and prehistoric and historic settlement patterns. This monograph will appeal to students, specialists, and researchers in the fields of archaeology and anthropology.
  • Depth Perception Through Motion

    • 1st Edition
    • May 10, 2014
    • Myron L. Braunstein
    • Edward C. Carterette + 1 more
    • English
    Series in Cognition and Perception: Depth Perception Through Motion focuses on the processes, methodologies, and techniques involved in depth perception through motion, including optic array, rigid motions, illusions, and axis. The book first elaborates on the paradox of depth perception, illusions of motion in depth, and optic array. Discussions focus on rigid motions in three-dimensional space, perspective gradients, projection plane, stereokinetic effect, rotating trapezoid, and the windmill and fan illusions. The text then examines transformations leading to the perception of depth, slant perception, and perceived direction of rotary motion. Topics include shadow and computer projections, direct observation of rotating figures, a model of the perception of rotary motion, dynamic slant and static slant perception, translations along the Z axis, and rotations about the X or Y axis. The publication is intended for researchers and graduate students interested in depth perception in dynamic environments.
  • The Coercive Social Worker

    British Lessons for American Social Services
    • 1st Edition
    • May 10, 2014
    • Joel F. Handler
    • English
    The Coercive Social Worker: British Lessons for American Social Services focuses on the role of social services in public departments of welfare, with emphasis on the enormous power of the social worker to impose the casework plan on the client. It explains how traditional social work theory combines with the delivery of "hard" services in the integrated, comprehensive family service to produce social workers with such power. Some of the lessons that can be learned by American social service agencies from the British experience are discussed. Comprised of seven chapters, this volume begins with a historical background on Britain's public social service program, launched in 1970 to provide a comprehensive, integrated family service at the local government level. The significance of the British experience to American social services is considered, with particular reference to the relationship between social work theory and social service policy and administration. The foundations of the modern welfare state are also discussed, along with social services in America in an income maintenance setting. The final chapter examines the problems facing the consumer of a comprehensive, integrated family service; the creation and implementation of administrative discretion in the social service context; legal rights of consumers; and alternative systems for the delivery of social services. This book is intended for social work professionals, administrators, policymakers, and advocates of the rights of people who deal with social welfare agencies.
  • The Special Status of Coronals: Internal and External Evidence

    Phonetics and Phonology, Vol. 2
    • 1st Edition
    • May 10, 2014
    • Carole Paradis + 1 more
    • English
    Phonetics and Phonology, Volume 2: The Special Status of Coronals: Internal and External Evidence contains a phonetic survey of coronal articulations and discusses many aspects of the phonological behavior of coronals as opposed to noncoronals. This book discusses the asymmetry and visibility in consonant articulations, coronal places of articulation, and underspecification of coronals in English. The cluster condition in Attic Greek, palatalization and representation of coronal, and relationship between laterality and coronality are also elaborated. This publication likewise covers the cross-linguistic survey of consonant harmony, coronals in child phonology, and coronal transparency in vowel spreading. This volume is intended for graduate students and scholars interested in phonology, phonetics, general linguistics, psycholinguistics, or language pathology.
  • Mississippian Settlement Patterns

    Studies in Archeology
    • 1st Edition
    • May 10, 2014
    • Bruce D. Smith
    • English
    Studies in Archeology: Mississippian Settlement Patterns explains the cultural organization of many of the prehistoric societies in the Eastern United States during the last 1000 years of their existence. This book emphasizes the difference between the central core of Mississippian societies and those peripheral societies that preceded its development. Readers are advised to begin the examination of this compilation by reading Chapter 16 first, followed by Chapters 8 to 13 and 15, in order to understand the variations of patterning among societies that are commonly regarded as nascent or developed Mississippian. The rest of the chapters analyze cultural groups on the West, North, and Northeast that are not Mississippian societies, including a discussion of late prehistoric societies that are in some ways divergent but are sometimes regarded as Mississippian. This publication is valuable to archeologists, historians, and researchers conducting work on Mississippian societies.
  • Regional Analysis

    Volume 2: Social Systems
    • 1st Edition
    • May 10, 2014
    • Carol A. Smith
    • English
    Regional Analysis, Volume II: Social Systems consists of studies on the general applications of the regional framework for analyzing socioeconomic systems as they exist and develop in territorial-environm... systems. This volume is concerned with social systems, emphasizing the interrelationships among the institutional components of complex societies. Marriage and kinship, political organization, formation of ethnic and cultural-territorial groups, and stratification systems that are affected by regional-environment... variables are also covered. This publication is beneficial to social and regional scientists, geographers, economists, social anthropologists, archeologists, sociologists, and political scientists intending to acquire knowledge of the implications of rural-urban relations and regional settlement patterns.
  • Historical and Philosophical Roots of Perception

    • 1st Edition
    • May 10, 2014
    • Edward C. Carterette + 1 more
    • English
    Handbook of Perception, Volume I: Historical and Philosophical Roots of Perception aims to bring together essential aspects of the very large, diverse, and widely scattered literature on human perception and to give a précis of the state of knowledge in every area of perception. This volume deals with the fundamentals of perceptual systems. The book begins with some philosophical problems of perception, of sense experience, of epistemology, and some questions on the philosophy of mind. It also considers the perceptual structure, association, attention, cognition and knowledge, consciousness and action. There are also chapters emphasizing several contemporary views of perception. Psychologists, biologists, and those interested in the study of human perception will find a book a good reference material.
  • Prehistoric Man and His Environments

    A Case Study in the Ozark Highland
    • 1st Edition
    • May 10, 2014
    • W. Raymond Wood + 1 more
    • English
    Prehistoric Man and His Environments: A Case Study in the Ozark Highland offers a preliminary model for the paleoecology of the western Ozark Highland in Missouri for the last 35,000 years and an interpretation of how humans have adapted to and exploited the area for the 10,500 years they are known to have lived there. The model, a set of hypotheses that includes a putative explanatory framework for the observations made at Ozark, is based on more than a decade of interdisciplinary fieldwork. Comprised of 14 chapters, this volume begins with a background on the interdisciplinary studies undertaken in the Pomme de Terre River Valley. The research has centered on the post-glacial deposits at the Rodgers Shelter and on five nearby spring bogs, each of which contained the bones of extinct mammals, pollen, and other material dating from late Pleistocene and early Holocene times. The archaeological investigations and subsequent analyses of these sites are discussed in detail. Sedimentary processes, changing subsistence patterns, material culture, and human burials at Rodgers Shelter are then analyzed. The final chapter describes the direction of research in the Ozark Highland, including plans to test aspects of the proposed model. This book will be of interest to anthropologists, archaeologists, geographers, geologists, and botanists.