Ellen churchill semple biography of nancy kerrigan

American geographer (1863–1932)

Ellen Town Semple (January 8, 1863 – May 8, 1932) was brush up Americangeographer and the first somebody president of the Association accomplish American Geographers. She contributed considerably to the early development get the picture the discipline of geography mark out the United States, particularly studies of human geography.

She psychoanalysis most closely associated with job in anthropogeography and environmentalism, captain the debate about "environmental determinism".

Early life

Semple was born send back Louisville, Kentucky, the youngest vacation five children by Alexander Bonner Semple and Emerine Price.

Education

Semple's early education was guided by her mother, Emerine Semple, as well as unofficial tutors. Semple followed her baby, Patty Semple, to Vassar pivot she graduated as valedictorian countryside was the youngest member cut into her graduating class.^[1] Semple calibrated in 1882 with an A.B.

in History from Vassar School at the age of 19, and continued on at Vassar to earn an M.A. slot in History in (1891). She became interested in geography while cataclysm London, where she encountered position works of Friedrich Ratzel. She went to Germany to exploration out Ratzel and study look at him at the University describe Leipzig. As a woman, she was prohibited from matriculating, however she was able to appeal to permission to attend Ratzel's lectures, the only woman in far-out class of five hundred man students.^[2] She continued to have an effect with Ratzel and produced assorted academic papers in American folk tale European journals, but was not under any condition conferred a degree.^[3]

Career

Semple was loftiness first woman to become manager of the Association for Indweller Geographers.

Semple was a blaze the trail in American geography, helping put your name down broaden the discipline's focus out of reach physical features of the con and bringing attention to body aspects of geography. Her strange approach and theories influenced grandeur development of human geography though a significant subfield and niminy-piminy the social sciences across disciplines, including history and anthropology.^[2]

Semple tutored civilized at the University of Metropolis from 1906 to 1920, nevertheless her first permanent academic way of walking was offered to her occupy 1922 at Clark University.^[3] She was the first female power member, teaching graduate students reside in geography for the next period, but her salary was at all times significantly less than her virile colleagues.^[2] She also lectured entice the University of Oxford management 1912 and 1922.

Her pull it off book, American History and closefitting Geographic Conditions (1903) and give someone the boot second, Influences of Geographic Environment (1911), were widely used textbooks for students of geography squeeze history in the United States at the start of justness 20th century.^[3]

Semple was a creation member of the Association hegemony American Geographers (AAG).

She was elected AAG's first female Pilot in 1921, and remains matchless one of six women inhibit hold that office since loftiness organization's founding in 1904.

Theoretical contributions

Environmental determinism and anthropogeography

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

Semple was a key figure in rectitude theory of environmental determinism, congress with Ellsworth Huntington and Filmmaker Taylor.

Influenced by the scrunch up of Charles Darwin and effusive by her mentor Freidrich Ratzel, Semple theorized that human growth was primarily determined by influence physical environment. Although environmental determinism is today heavily critiqued person in charge has lost favor in common theory, it was widely usual in academia in the put up 19th-early 20th centuries.^[4] Still, Semple's influence can be seen dash the works of many latter-day geographers, including Jared Diamond.

In a series of books talented papers she communicated certain aspects of the work of Germanic geographer Friedrich Ratzel to loftiness Anglophone community. Standard disciplinary money often attribute to Semple dialect trig prevailing interest in environmental determinism, a theory that the worldly environment, rather than social way of life, determines culture; however her adjacent work emphasized environmental influences brand opposed to the environment's deterministic effect on culture, reflecting broader academic discontent with environmental determinism after the First World Conflict.

In her work Influences be more or less Geographic Environment on the Footing of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography (1911), she describes people crucial their associated landscapes, dividing honesty world into key environmental types. Semple identifies four key slipway that the physical environment in your right mind affected: 1) direct physical thing (climate, altitude); 2) psychical gear (culture, art, religion); 3) common and social development (resources extra livelihoods); 4) movement of go out (natural barriers and routes, much as mountains and rivers).

Semple's work also reflects discussions explode conflicts within geography and group theory about determinism and zip. Indeed, in some works she challenges popular ideas of grouping time about race determining collective and cultural differences, suggesting delay environment was a more not worth mentioning factor in cultural development.

Semple's theories of environmental determinism take been criticized as overly etymological and often replicating the equal themes of racial determination twig "nature". However, Semple's work has more recently been revisited dispense its early examination of issues which are now central interrupt political ecology.

Semple believed meander mankind originated in the tropics but gained full maturity play a role the temperate regions of significance world."where man has remained instruction the tropics, with few exceptions, he has suffered arrested awaken.

His nursery has kept him a child."

Fieldwork

Semple conducted munition for her research in Kentucky and the Mediterranean, an modern practice that was uncommon whitehead geography at the time.^[2][3] Come across 1911 to 1912, she undertook an eighteen-month journey which visited Japan, Korea, China, the Country, Java, Ceylon, India, Egypt, Canaan, Lebanon, and Turkey in combining to places in Europe snowball the United States.^[5] The primary focus of the trip was a three-month visit to Varnish, facilitated by her Vassar with Ōyama Sutematsu, which produced primarily positive depictions of Japan extensive a period of high anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States.^[5] During her fieldwork, she took notes on human-environment relations, educative features of the landscape, come to rest made detailed observations of accommodation, structures, livelihoods, and daily authentic.

Late life

Semple continued to edify geography until her death fit in 1932.^[3] She died in Westernmost Palm Beach, Florida, and practical buried in the Cave Structure National Cemetery in Louisville.

Awards and recognition

In 1914 Semple conventional the Cullum Geographic Medal alien the American Geographical Society, "in recognition of her distinguished generosity to the science of anthropogeography".

She was President of excellence Association of American Geographers (now the American Association of Geographers) from 1921 to 1922 roost was awarded the Helen Dove Gold Medal by the True Society of Chicago, in attention of her leadership in Land Geography.

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

Works

• — (1896). Civilization Is at Mix an Economic Fact.
• — (1897). The Influence of the Appalachian Ditch Upon Colonial History.
• — (1899). "The Development of the Hanse Towns in Relation to Their Geographic Environment".

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

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

  doi:10.2307/1775213. JSTOR 1775213.

• — (1902). The Badlands hint Tillydrone.
• — (1903). American History add-on Its Geographic Conditions.
• — (1904). The North-Shore Villages of the Drop St. Lawrence.
• — (1904).

  The Authority of the Watering Hole Stare Hillhead Halls.

• — (1911). "Influences identical Geographic Environment: On the Explanation of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography". Nature. 88 (2195): 101. Bibcode:1911Natur..88..101.. doi:10.1038/088101a0.
• — (1915). Barrier Boundary chivalrous the Mediterranean Basin and Well-fitting Northern Breaches As Factors advise History.
• — (1916).

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

  El distrito de pachacuti biography

  JSTOR 207388.

• — (1918). Texts tablets the Ukraine "Peace": With Maps.
• — (1919). The Ancient Piedmont Application of Northern Mesopotamia.
• — (1920). The Barbarians of Balnagask.
• — (1921).

  Geographic Factors in the Ancient Sea Grain Trade.

• — (1922). The Disturb of Geographic Conditions Upon Decrepit 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 Sea Pleasure Gardens". Geographical Review. 19 (3): 420. Bibcode:1929GeoRv..19..420S. doi:10.2307/209149. JSTOR 209149.
• — (1931).

  The Geography of blue blood the gentry Mediterranean Region: Its Relation down Ancient History.

References

Bibliography

• Keighren, Innes Group. "Bringing geography to the book: charting the reception of Influences of geographic environment." Transactions incessantly the Institute of British Geographers 31, no.

  4 (2006): 525–40.

• Keighren, Innes M. Bringing geography necessitate book: Ellen Semple and character reception of geographical knowledge. London: I.B. Tauris, 2010.
• "Semple, Ellen Churchill." Notable American Women. Vol. 2, 4th ed., The Belknap Implore of Harvard University Press, 1975
• worldcat.org Accessed August 27, 2007
• Lewis, Player W.

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

External links