Ellen Churchill Semple Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Ellen Churchill Semple received her B.A. and M.A. degrees in history from Vassar College during the first decade of the 20th century. At that time, American geography was strongly influenced by geology and the sub-discipline of physical geography commanded its orientation. Semple received her introduction to geography through attending lectures by the noted German geographer Freidrich Ratzel, whose two-volume work, Anthropogeographie, reflected the current thinking in the field. Semple worked with Ratzel at the University of Leipzig for several years, but received no degree because women were not allowed to matriculate.

Carl Ortwin Sauer, the American geographer who would become the unofficial dean of cultural geography, heard several of Semple’s lectures when she visited the University of Chicago. Sauer remarked about her penchant for documenting the influences of the physical environment on human occupants. The theme of “influences” would become the hallmark of her subsequent writings.

Semple was 38 years old before she received her first permanent faculty appointment. In 1921, she joined the geography faculty at Clark University, becoming the first female faculty member at that institution. She taught courses in the geography graduate program until her death. The year 1921 was important in another way: In that year she became the first female president of the Association of American Geographers. Some years earlier, Semple was a founding member of that prestigious organization.

During her career, Semple received a number of awards, including an honorary doctorate from the University of Kentucky, largely in recognition of her seminal research on the Anglo-Saxon communities living in the mountains of that state. This study was unique in its approach in that it combined principles and concepts from geography, history, and anthropology. The work was precedent-setting as well because it involved her in extensive field research in the region, a practice described as relatively uncommon in the discipline in those years. Other awards included the Cullum Medal from the American Geographical Society (1914), and the Helen Culver Gold Medal from the Geographical Society of Chicago (1931).

Semple’s two most prominent books, American History and Its Geographic Conditions (1903) and Influences of the Geographic Environment (1911), were attempts to unite geography and history in process investigations of place and time. Her explanations of historical development during the westward movement included discussion of the impact of the physical environment, and of its significance given the transportation technology of the time. In the view of many scholars in history and geography, her conclusions about the influence of the physical barriers encountered during the westward movement were too pointed and paid little attention to the culture groups involved.

Unfortunately, once the grip of environmental determinism was loosened following the publication in 1925 of Carl Sauer’s article “The Morphology of Landscape,” her influence on the discipline waned. Semple had long been cast as an environmental determinist, especially after working with Ratzel and following his arguments in the first volume of Anthropogeographie. In later years Semple’s work was seen in a different light. She was recognized for her research approach in human-environment interaction, a geographic theme that is central within the modern discipline.

Bibliography:

Wilford E. Bladen and Pradyumna P. Karan, eds., The Evolution of Geographic Thought in America: A Kentucky Root (Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1983);
Ellen Churchill Semple, Influences of Geographical Environment (Henry Holt and Company, 1911);
Ellen Churchill Semple, American History and Its Geographical Conditions (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1933);
John Wright, “Miss Semple’s Influences of the Geographical Environment: Notes Toward a Bibliography,” Geographical Review (v.52, 1962).