Women as Geographers: Some Thoughts of Ellen Churchill Semple

WOMEN AS GEOGRAPHERS: SOME THOUGHTS OF ELLEN CHURCHILL SEMPLE Allen D. Bushong* Vassar College celebrated its golden anniversary in the autumn of 1915 with a varied four-day program on its campus in Poughkeepsie, New York. From the several thousand alumnae of this pioneer institution for the higher education of women, three distinguished graduates were accorded the honor of delivering a major address to commemorate the occasion. One of the select alumnae was Ellen Churchill Semple, Class of 1882, who spoke to the assembled faculty, students, graduates, and friends of the College on "Geographical Research As A Field For Women." (1) Ellen Churchill Semple had earned the honor, and her topic was one on which she was eminently qualified to speak. By 1915, she had amassed solid academic credentials and impressive professional achievements as a writer and teacher of geography. In the 33 years since receiving her baccalaureate degree at the age of nineteen, she had undertaken post-graduate work toward an external Master of Arts degree, earned from Vassar in 1891 on the basis of readings in sociology and political economy plus a thesis, "Slavery: A Study in Sociology." Further study at the University of Leipzig in 1891-1892 and in 1895 with the geographer Frederich Ratzel gave her the professional focus she had been seeking. The two terms of study at Leipzig were preceded, separated , and followed by years of teaching Latin, Greek, and ancient history at several private girls' schools in Louisville, Kentucky, the city where she was born on January 8, 1863. After 1892, however, her activities turned increasingly to geographical research and writing. By 1903, she had published ten articles, translated and had published a treatise of Ratzel's on political areas, and completed her well-received first book, American History and Its Geographic Conditions. A year later she became one of two female charter members of the select Association of American Geographers. Miss Semple's first book provided her recognition in the discipline and expanded her professional activities. In 1906, with 20 years of teaching experience to her credit, she entered the university classroom as an occasional lecturer in the geography department at the University of Chicago, the first separate department of geography in an American university to offer graduate work through the doctorate. Her second book, Influence of Geographic Environment; On the Basis of RatzeYs System of Anthropo-geography, appeared in 1911, was •Dr. Bushong is associate professor of geography at the University of South Carolina . This paper was accepted for publication in February 1975. Vol. XV, No. 2 103 hailed as a scholarly work of major proportions, and further enhanced her professional reputation. She accepted an invitation to lecture at the Oxford University Summer School of Geography in 1912. In 1914, the American Geographical Society conferred on her its prestigious Cullum Geographical Medal "in recognition of her distinguished contributions to the science of anthropogeography." (2) She was 51 years old and the only woman up to that time to have been awarded this medal. (3) Miss Semple began her Vassar address of 1915 by presenting to her audience for their consideration the image of an almost untouched field of study with vast opportunities for the scholar: (4) I want to take you into the heart of my work. I invite you to green fields and pastures new, fields as broad as this great continent , stretching on across river and plain and mountain out to the wide Pacific; fields stretching on beyond the ocean and across the eastern hemisphere. This land is yours for the taking. Little of it has been pre-empted. Here you may stake out your claim and measure it by the square league, as the pioneers did. . . . Here you will find a field rich and fertile, waiting for a labor force to develop it, promising an abundant harvest to the tiller. She then proceeded to give several reasons for recommending geography as a research subject for women: (S) In the first place it is an uncrowded field; nay, it clamors for laborers. (6) A few years ago . . . when women began to push into the various domains of men's activities, a sense of crowding went through the world of...