Toshiro Nakajima – författare

This is a collection of writings by the American chemist and home economist, Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards.From the Preface by Kazuko Sumida:Ellen H. Swallow Richards (1842–1911) was the first woman graduate and staff member at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the first woman professional chemist in the U.S. She was known mainly as a founder of the American home economics movement and, to a lesser extent, as the mother of American public health. Her contribution included not only the establishment of the standards for water analysis, but also the provision of school lunches, food and environmental education, and the consumer movement. Through such activities, Richards showed people a new direction to follow for modernized home and urban life. She is deserving of special attention as a woman who was active both academically and socially from the late 19th century to the early 20th century when the foundation of modern society in the U.S. was laid.This collection provides primary sources which will enable the reader to have a proper understanding of the thoughts of Richards who advocated a science of environment as early as the 19th century. She considered environment to be a total whole, and was active in pursuit of what science, human possibility or development should be. For her, environmental education was strongly linked to social and ethical issues, and the key to the solution for these was the very human activities in daily life affecting their environment. Richards, whose cooperative belief that ‘man is a part of organic nature, subject to laws of development and growth’ (Euthenics) was a basis of daily life, cannot be called merely a material feminist—(which a certain scholar classified her as). What she had in mind means ‘the man in the community environment’.These materials are essential for interdisciplinary research that includes multiple fields such as the history of science, of education, of ideas, social history of the U.S., sociology, and feminism as well as home economics and public health. The thoughts and lifelong activities of Richards will show us a direction at which we ought to aim in current everyday life.

This is the second and final collection in the series of reprints of articles in English edited by Mario Praz and published in Italy between 1966 and the year of Praz’s death in 1983. It includes all articles published in English and some important papers written by Praz himself in Italian as well.from the Preface of Toshiro NakajimaEnglish Miscellany—A Symposium of Literature, History and Arts, edited by Mario Praz, was issued annually by the British Council, Rome between 1950 and 1983. It is now recognized as a great contribution to English studies from the pre-Chaucer period to the present day. Praz’s writings are well known for his masterly blend of erudition, insight and wit, and are models of lucidity, sensitive to the complex inspirations and hidden meanings behind each work. His editorship of this collection reflects these characteristics, and is based on a vast knowledge of English culture and history.This selection is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the literary and cultural environments of Britain and Italy, and gives us a thoughtful, frequently illuminating study of what has often been viewed as a gap in the production of major writers and artists. The present volumes of English Miscellany give some account of what is achieved in interdisciplinary scholarship during a period which saw many experiments in literature and art and a radically new approach to the writing of history.