2007 marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the death of Ellen Churchill Semple. For almost three decades at the beginning of the twentieth century she exerted an important influence on the disciplinary development of Anglo-American geography. Although not "written out" of geography's history in the same way as many of her female contemporaries, her contribution is often presented simply as a brief and misguided flirtation with environmental determinism. Semple was responsible, in part, for training a generation of American geographers, for providing the discipline with a novel methodological focus, and for encouraging and promoting the work of women scholars.

Papers are invited which consider or reappraise any aspect of Semple's personal life, her work in geography, or her intellectual legacy. Contributions attending to human-environment relations, epistemic connections between geography and history, the historical role of women within the discipline, or Semple's travel, exploration, and geographical work in the field, would all be suitable.

Expressions of interest by 25 September 2006.