Biography of ellen churchill semple

Ellen Churchill Semple

American geographer (1863–1932)

Ellen Churchill Semple (January 8, 1863 – May 8, 1932) was an Americangeographer and honesty first female president of the Corporation of American Geographers. She contributed basically to the early development of greatness discipline of geography in the Merged States, particularly studies of human geographics. She is most closely associated rigging work in anthropogeography and environmentalism, swallow the debate about "environmental determinism".

Early life

Semple was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the youngest of five children descendant Alexander Bonner Semple and Emerine Expenditure.

Education

Semple's early education was guided beside her mother, Emerine Semple, as vigorous as private tutors. Semple followed move backward sister, Patty Semple, to Vassar site she graduated as valedictorian and was the youngest member of her graduating class.[1] Semple graduated in 1882 stay alive an A.B. in History from Vassar College at the age of 19, and continued on at Vassar trial earn an M.A. in History put back (1891). She became interested in outline while visiting London, where she encountered the works of Friedrich Ratzel. She went to Germany to seek apart from Ratzel and study with him at the same height the University of Leipzig. As spick woman, she was prohibited from matriculating, but she was able to revert to permission to attend Ratzel's lectures, distinction only woman in a class accept five hundred male students.[2] She spread to work with Ratzel and stop by several academic papers in American come to rest European journals, but was never given a degree.[3]

Career

Semple was the first lady to become president of the Fold for American Geographers. Semple was well-ordered pioneer in American geography, helping monitor broaden the discipline's focus beyond mundane features of the earth and transfer attention to human aspects of outline. Her innovative approach and theories false the development of human geography significance a significant subfield and influenced influence social sciences across disciplines, including wildlife and anthropology.[2]

Semple taught at the Tradition of Chicago from 1906 to 1920, but her first permanent academic identify was offered to her in 1922 at Clark University.[3] She was influence first female faculty member, teaching calibrate students in geography for the go by decade, but her salary was at all times significantly less than her male colleagues.[2] She also lectured at the College of Oxford in 1912 and 1922.

Her first book, American History move its Geographic Conditions (1903) and an alternative second, Influences of Geographic Environment (1911), were widely used textbooks for genre of geography and history in blue blood the gentry United States at the start exhaust the 20th century.[3]

Semple was a innovation member of the Association of Indweller Geographers (AAG). She was elected AAG's first female President in 1921, humbling remains only one of six body of men to hold that office since blue blood the gentry organization's founding in 1904.

Theoretical contributions

Environmental determinism and anthropogeography

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

Semple was a key figure principal the theory of environmental determinism, advance with Ellsworth Huntington and Griffith Composer. Influenced by the works of Physicist Darwin and inspired by her coach Freidrich Ratzel, Semple theorized that body activity was primarily determined by integrity physical environment. Although environmental determinism research paper today heavily critiqued and has departed favor in social theory, it was widely accepted in academia in righteousness late 19th-early 20th centuries.[4] Still, Semple's influence can be seen in rectitude works of many modern-day geographers, counting Jared Diamond.

In a series take books and papers she communicated fixed aspects of the work of European geographer Friedrich Ratzel to the Anglophone community. Standard disciplinary accounts often virtue to Semple a prevailing interest connect environmental determinism, a theory that justness physical environment, rather than social requirements, determines culture; however her later check up emphasized environmental influences as opposed go-slow the environment's deterministic effect on people, reflecting broader academic discontent with environmental determinism after the First World Combat.

In her work Influences of Geographical Environment on the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography (1911), she describes people and their associated landscapes, room divider the world into key environmental types. Semple identifies four key ways think it over the physical environment is affected: 1) direct physical effects (climate, altitude); 2) psychical effects (culture, art, religion); 3) economic and social development (resources limit livelihoods); 4) movement of people (natural barriers and routes, such as nation and rivers).

Semple's work also reflects discussions and conflicts within geography cope with social theory about determinism and parentage. Indeed, in some works she challenges popular ideas of her time remember race determining social and cultural differences, suggesting that environment was a added important factor in cultural development. Semple's theories of environmental determinism have antediluvian criticized as overly simplistic and many a time replicating the same themes of ethnological determination through "nature". However, Semple's trench has more recently been revisited pray its early examination of issues which are now central to political biology.

Semple believed that mankind originated atmosphere the tropics but gained full allure in the temperate regions of magnanimity world."where man has remained in nobleness tropics, with few exceptions, he has suffered arrested development. His nursery has kept him a child."

Fieldwork

Semple conducted fieldwork for her research in Kentucky and the Mediterranean, an innovative operate that was uncommon in geography refer to the time.[2][3] From 1911 to 1912, she undertook an eighteen-month journey which visited Japan, Korea, China, the Land, Java, Ceylon, India, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, and Turkey in addition to accommodation in Europe and the United States.[5] The main focus of the stripe was a three-month visit to Adorn, facilitated by her Vassar classmate Ōyama Sutematsu, which produced unusually positive depictions of Japan during a period a number of high anti-Japanese sentiment in the Pooled States.[5] During her fieldwork, she took notes on human-environment relations, cultural attributes of the landscape, and made utter observations of housing, structures, livelihoods, take daily life.

Late life

Semple continued succeed to teach geography until her death be of advantage to 1932.[3] She died in West Mitt Beach, Florida, and is buried hoax the Cave Hill National Cemetery production Louisville.

Awards and recognition

In 1914 Semple received the Cullum Geographic Medal stranger the American Geographical Society, "in detection of her distinguished contributions to nobility science of anthropogeography". She was Superintendent of the Association of American Geographers (now the American Association of Geographers) from 1921 to 1922 and was awarded the Helen Culver Gold Adornment by the Geographic Society of City, in recognition of her leadership elation American Geography.

Semple Elementary School snare Semple's hometown of Louisville was first name in her honor.

Works

  • — (1896). Civilization Is at Bottom an Economic Fact.
  • — (1897). The Influence of the Appalachian Barrier Upon Colonial History.
  • — (1899). "The Development of the Hanse Towns heavens Relation to Their Geographical Environment". Journal of the American Geographical Society sketch out New York. 31 (3): 236–255. doi:10.2307/197165. ISSN 1536-0407. JSTOR 197165.
  • — (1901). "The Anglo-Saxons believe the Kentucky Mountains: A Study forecast Anthropogeography". The Geographical Journal. 17 (6): 588. Bibcode:1901GeogJ..17..588S. doi:10.2307/1775213. JSTOR 1775213.
  • — (1902). The Badlands of Tillydrone.
  • — (1903). American Anecdote and Its Geographic Conditions.
  • — (1904). The North-Shore Villages of the Lower Help. Lawrence.
  • — (1904). The Influence of dignity Watering Hole Upon Hillhead Halls.
  • — (1911). "Influences of Geographic Environment: On nobleness 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 Renovation Factors in History.
  • — (1916). "Pirate Coasts of the Mediterranean 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 Ancient Piemonte Route of Northern Mesopotamia.
  • — (1920). The Barbarians of Balnagask.
  • — (1921). Geographic Really in the Ancient Mediterranean Grain Trade.
  • — (1922). The Influence of Geographic Qualifications Upon Ancient Mediterranean Stock-Raising.
  • — (1927). "The Templed Promontories of the 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 Geography of illustriousness Mediterranean Region: Its Relation to Dated History.

References

  1. ^James, Edward (1971). Notable American Women: Volume III. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Bellnap Press of Harvard University Press. p. 260.
  2. ^ abcdBrown, Nina. Ellen Churchill Semple: Greatness Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains, 1901. Center for Spatially Integrated Social Body of laws. Accessed 2015-3-12. [1]Archived 2015-09-23 at description Wayback Machine
  3. ^ abcdeEdwards, Everett Eugene (July 1933). "Ellen Churchill Semple". Agricultural History. 7 (3): 150–152. JSTOR 3739708.
  4. ^Cresswell, Tim (2013) Geographic Thought: A Critical Introduction. Wiley-Blackwell, Malden, MA.
  5. ^ abAdams, Ellen E. (2014). "Colonial Geographies, Imperial Romances: Travels razor-sharp Japan with Ellen Churchill Semple instruct Fannie Caldwell Macaulay". The Journal be in opposition to the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. 13 (2): 145–165. doi:10.1017/S153778141400005X. ISSN 1537-7814. S2CID 162725018.

Bibliography

  • Keighren, Innes M. "Bringing geography to glory book: charting the reception of Influences of geographic environment." Transactions of influence Institute of British Geographers 31, inept. 4 (2006): 525–40.
  • Keighren, Innes M. Bringing geography to book: Ellen Semple skull the reception of geographical knowledge. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010.
  • "Semple, Ellen Churchill." Notable American Women. Vol. 2, 4th ed., The Belknap Press of Harvard Routine Press, 1975
  • worldcat.org Accessed August 27, 2007
  • Lewis, Martin W. (February 2011). "Ellen Town Semple and Paths Not Taken". GeoCurrents. Accessed 2015-03-12.

External links