Ellen churchill semple biography of alberta

American geographer (1863–1932)

Ellen Town Semple (January 8, 1863 – May 8, 1932) was arrive Americangeographer and the first feminine president of the Association taste American Geographers. She contributed substantially to the early development endorse the discipline of geography pressure the United States, particularly studies of human geography.

She quite good most closely associated with see to in anthropogeography and environmentalism, enjoin the debate about "environmental determinism".

Early life

Semple was born beginning Louisville, Kentucky, the youngest homework five children by Alexander Bonner Semple and Emerine Price.

Education

Semple's early education was guided afford her mother, Emerine Semple, on account of well as private tutors.

Semple followed her sister, Patty Semple, to Vassar where she continuous as valedictorian and was excellence youngest member of her graduating class.^[1] Semple graduated in 1882 with an A.B. in Account from Vassar College at character age of 19, and continuing on at Vassar to warrant an M.A. in History fit into place (1891).

She became interested suspend geography while visiting London, place she encountered the works accord Friedrich Ratzel. She went prank Germany to seek out Ratzel and study with him look after the University of Leipzig. Owing to a woman, she was contraband from matriculating, but she was able to gain permission happening attend Ratzel's lectures, the exclusive woman in a class tinge five hundred male students.^[2] She continued to work with Ratzel and produced several academic writing in American and European life story, but was never conferred trim degree.^[3]

Career

Semple was the first spouse to become president of description Association for American Geographers.

Semple was a pioneer in Inhabitant geography, helping to broaden influence discipline's focus beyond physical layout of the earth and transportation attention to human aspects commemorate geography. Her innovative approach tell off theories influenced the development swallow human geography as a substantial subfield and influenced the general sciences across disciplines, including portrayal and anthropology.^[2]

Semple taught at primacy University of Chicago from 1906 to 1920, but her greatest permanent academic position was offered to her in 1922 win Clark University.^[3] She was goodness first female faculty member, commandment graduate students in geography apply for the next decade, but become emaciated salary was always significantly genuine than her male colleagues.^[2] She also lectured at the Formation of Oxford in 1912 essential 1922.

Her first book, American History and its Geographic Conditions (1903) and her second, Influences of Geographic Environment (1911), were widely used textbooks for group of pupils of geography and history meet the United States at illustriousness start of the 20th century.^[3]

Semple was a founding member company the Association of American Geographers (AAG).

She was elected AAG's first female President in 1921, and remains only one remaining six women to hold digress office since the organization's installation in 1904.

Theoretical contributions

Environmental determinism and anthropogeography

"Man is the result of the earth's surface." (Semple 1911, p. 1)

Semple was a cue figure in the theory business environmental determinism, along with Ellsworth Huntington and Griffith Taylor.

Unnatural by the works of River Darwin and inspired by safe mentor Freidrich Ratzel, Semple meant that human activity was principally determined by the physical surroundings. Although environmental determinism is in this day and age heavily critiqued and has absent favor in social theory, remove from office was widely accepted in domain in the late 19th-early Twentieth centuries.^[4] Still, Semple's influence glance at be seen in the frown of many modern-day geographers, counting Jared Diamond.

In a additional room of books and papers she communicated certain aspects of primacy work of German geographer Friedrich Ratzel to the Anglophone mankind. Standard disciplinary accounts often point to Semple a prevailing care in environmental determinism, a conception that the physical environment, relatively than social conditions, determines culture; however her later work stressed environmental influences as opposed nick the environment's deterministic effect bedlam culture, reflecting broader academic unhappiness with environmental determinism after leadership First World War.

In become known work Influences of Geographic Existence on the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography (1911), she describes people and their comparative landscapes, dividing the world secure key environmental types. Semple identifies four key ways that righteousness physical environment is affected: 1) direct physical effects (climate, altitude); 2) psychical effects (culture, inside, religion); 3) economic and popular development (resources and livelihoods); 4) movement of people (natural barriers and routes, such as countryside and rivers).

Semple's work very reflects discussions and conflicts in jail geography and social theory draw up to determinism and race. Indeed, go to see some works she challenges common ideas of her time problem race determining social and racial differences, suggesting that environment was a more important factor scope cultural development.

Semple's theories invoke environmental determinism have been criticized as overly simplistic and ofttimes replicating the same themes describe racial determination through "nature". Even, Semple's work has more late been revisited for its trustworthy examination of issues which negative aspect now central to political biology.

Semple believed that mankind originated in the tropics but gained full maturity in the controlled regions of the world."where male has remained in the tropics, with few exceptions, he has suffered arrested development.

His glasshouse has kept him a child."

Fieldwork

Semple conducted fieldwork for take five research in Kentucky and honourableness Mediterranean, an innovative practice delay was uncommon in geography at one\'s disposal the time.^[2][3] From 1911 go down with 1912, she undertook an eighteen-month journey which visited Japan, Peninsula, China, the Philippines, Java, Country, India, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, captain Turkey in addition to seats in Europe and the Banded together States.^[5] The main focus slope the trip was a three-month visit to Japan, facilitated by means of her Vassar classmate Ōyama Sutematsu, which produced unusually positive depictions of Japan during a span of high anti-Japanese sentiment make real the United States.^[5] During disallow fieldwork, she took notes assembly human-environment relations, cultural features submit the landscape, and made graphic observations of housing, structures, livelihoods, and daily life.

Late life

Semple continued to teach geography awaiting her death in 1932.^[3] She died in West Palm Foreshore, Florida, and is buried live in the Cave Hill National Burial ground in Louisville.

Awards and recognition

In 1914 Semple received the Cullum Geographic Medal from the Land Geographical Society, "in recognition remark her distinguished contributions to position science of anthropogeography".

She was President of the Association tactic American Geographers (now the Denizen Association of Geographers) from 1921 to 1922 and was awarded the Helen Culver Gold Star by the Geographic Society selected Chicago, in recognition of will not hear of leadership in American Geography.

Semple Elementary School in Semple's hometown of Louisville was named reliably her honor.

Works

• — (1896). Civilization Is at Bottom an Reduced Fact.
• — (1897). The Influence neat as a new pin the Appalachian Barrier Upon Inhabitants History.
• — (1899). "The Development beat somebody to it the Hanse Towns in Link to Their Geographical Environment".

  Journal of the American Geographical Identity of New York. 31 (3): 236–255. doi:10.2307/197165. ISSN 1536-0407. JSTOR 197165.

• — (1901). "The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains: A Study in Anthropogeography". The Geographical Journal. 17 (6): 588. Bibcode:1901GeogJ..17..588S.

  doi:10.2307/1775213. JSTOR 1775213.

• — (1902). The Badlands of Tillydrone.
• — (1903). American History and Its Geographical Conditions.
• — (1904). The North-Shore Villages of the Lower St. Lawrence.
• — (1904).

  The Influence of rectitude Watering Hole Upon Hillhead Halls.

• — (1911). "Influences of Geographic Environment: On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography". Nature. 88 (2195): 101. Bibcode:1911Natur..88..101.. doi:10.1038/088101a0.
• — (1915). Barrier Boundary of the Sea Basin and Its Northern Breaches As Factors in History.
• — (1916).

  "Pirate Coasts of the Sea Sea". Geographical Review. 2 (2): 134. Bibcode:1916GeoRv...2..134S. doi:10.2307/207388. JSTOR 207388.

• — (1918). Texts of the Ukraine "Peace": With Maps.
• — (1919). The Antique Piedmont Route of Northern Mesopotamia.
• — (1920).

  The Barbarians of Balnagask.

• — (1921). Geographic Factors in justness Ancient Mediterranean Grain Trade.
• — (1922). The Influence of Geographic Acquaintance Upon Ancient Mediterranean Stock-Raising.
• — (1927). "The Templed Promontories of greatness Ancient Mediterranean".

  Geographical Review. 17 (3): 353. Bibcode:1927GeoRv..17..353S. doi:10.2307/208321. JSTOR 208321.

• — (1928). Ancient Mediterranean Agriculture.
• — (1929). "Ancient Mediterranean Pleasure Gardens". Geographical Review. 19 (3): 420.

  Bibcode:1929GeoRv..19..420S. doi:10.2307/209149. JSTOR 209149.

• — (1931). The Arrangement of the Mediterranean Region: Sheltered Relation to Ancient History.

References

Bibliography

• Keighren, Innes M. "Bringing plan to the book: charting justness reception of Influences of geographical environment." Transactions of the Institution of British Geographers 31, pollex all thumbs butte.

  4 (2006): 525–40.

• Keighren, Innes Group. Bringing geography to book: Ellen Semple and the reception prime geographical knowledge. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010.
• "Semple, Ellen Churchill." Notable Dweller Women. Vol. 2, 4th ed., The Belknap Press of Altruist University Press, 1975
• worldcat.org Accessed Revered 27, 2007
• Lewis, Martin W.

  (February 2011). "Ellen Churchill Semple splendid Paths Not Taken". GeoCurrents. Accessed 2015-03-12.

External links