Innes M. Keighren, a Ph.D. candidate
in the Institute of Geography, has research interests
in the geographies of reading and the reception of knowledge.
His thesis is concerned with the work of American geographer
Ellen Churchill Semple (1863–1932) and the reception
of her 1911 volume Influences of geographic environment
.
The publication
of Influences coincided with the emergence
of geography as an independent academic discipline.
The book exerted an important influence on the practice
and perspective of a generation of geographers, and
helped to shape the development and articulation of
the discipline during the early decades of the twentieth
century.
Influences
was not received, however, with uniform approbation.
For those geographers who considered it a monument to
Semple's scholarship and erudition, it was seen as a
manifesto for a scientific approach to geographical
research. For others, Influences was conceptually
flawed: a text which might damage the academic legitimacy
and disciplinary credibility of geography. Accepted
by some, repudiated by others, Influences
was lauded and criticized in almost equal measure.
In examining this disparity,
Innes hopes to show that it is possible to trace a geography
of the reception of Influences, and to reveal
a spatial particularity in its reading, reviewing, use,
and disuse. In so doing, his research addresses the
epistemic and methodological bases of book geography,
and describes the contribution that geography can make
to explaining how knowledge and ideas, in textual form,
are communicated and received. By attending to different
local readings of Influences, it is possible
to see not only how its ideas moved between places,
but also how they were modified, challenged, and accepted
as a consequence of local circumstances.
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