Keller is best known as the editor of William Graham Sumner’s papers in many volumes published in the early 20th century by Yale University Press. He was scholar in his own right and wrote on German colonial policy, economic geography, and sociology.
Keller came from Springfield, Ohio. He graduated from Yale College in 1896 and received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1899. He immediately joined the social science faculty at Yale and was appointed professor in 1907, succeeding his mentor, and taught at Yale until 1942.
Yale's eclectic approach to social science during Keller's time is illustrated by the Festschrift for Keller, edited by George Peter Murdock, presented to Keller in celebration of his completion of 30 years as professor of the science of society in Yale University (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937) and consisting of essays by 26 scholars who studied with Keller at Yale.
Biography
The Beginnings of German Colonization, Yale Review, May 1901
The Colonial Policy of the Germans, Yale Review, February 1902
Homeric Society: A Sociological Study of the Iliad and the Odyssey, New York: Longmans,Green, and Company, 1902
Queries in Ethnography, New York: Longmans, Green, 1903
Notes on the Danish West Indies, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 22, no. 1, 1903
Portuguese Colonization in Brazil, New Haven, 1906
Colonization: A Study of the Founding of New Societies, Boston: Ginn & Company, 1908
Race Distinction, New Haven: Department of Anthropology, Yale University, 1909
Physical andCommercial Geography: A Study of Certain Controlling Conditions of Commerce, with Herbert Ernest Gregory and Avard Longley Bishop, Boston: Ginn & Company, 1910
Commercial and Industrial Geography, with Avard Longley Bishop, Boston: Ginn & Company, 1912
Societal Evolution: A Study of the Evolutionary Basis of the Science of Society, New York: Macmillan Company, 1915; later editions in 1931 and 1947
Industry and Trade: Historical and Descriptive Account of Their Development in the United States, with Avery Longley Bishop, Boston: Ginn & Company, 1918
Through War to Peace: A Study of the Great War as an Incident in the Evolution of Society, New York: Macmillan Company, 1921
Starting Points in Social Science, Boston: Ginn & Company, 1925
Man's Rough Road: Backgrounds and Bearings From Mankind's Experience, New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1932; acondensed edition of Sumner's, Keller's, and Davie's, The Science of Society; and Reminiscences (mainly personal) of William Graham Sumner; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1933
Brass Tacks, New York: A. A. Knopf, 1938
Net Impressions, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942
