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The article announces the 2017 Association of Pacific Coast Geographers (APCG) awards, including the Tom McKnight and Joan Clemons Award to Sean Pries of University of California, Davis and the President's Award to Birendra Rana and Genie Bey.

The article lists the recipients of Student Paper Awards from the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers (APCG), including Vanessa Massaro, Ann Fetchall and Gretchen Hill.

Based on Carl O. Sauer's taped reflections on his own academic life, this paper outlines and offers a personal appreciation of Sauer's intellectual history. I argue that Sauer's intellectual life can be conceptualized as three dialectical developmental stages: (1) the Warrenton-Calw stage , marked by general education in his hometown environment; (2) the Chicago-Ann Arbor stage , marked by steep intellectual growth and expansion of his knowledge in geography as an academic subject; and (3) the Berkeley Stage , characterized by his Mexican field work and establishment of his own form of historical-cultural geography. This paper argues that Sauer's own intellectual curiosity, rather than any external influences, was the primary factor behind his scholarly progression to successive stages. Driven by his own curiosity, Sauer covered a wide range of research themes covering physical geography, use of fire in the development of landscape, theoretical discussion of the landscape morphology, and prehistorical agricultural origins and dispersals. He was a remarkable scholar and teacher who made a significant impact on the course of geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to tell episodes of the geographical trajectory of radical geographer Clark Akatiff based on his own reflections and statements by people who know him as friend, colleague, or teacher. The authors make a plea to pay more attention to "small stories" and "minor geographies" in studies on the history of geography and to employ unconventional narratives that provide insights into how geographers engage with the world, express their political and philosophical standpoints, inspire others, and lead an essentially geographical life. Personal accounts like Akatiff's do not oppose the dominant discourse of key thinkers in the discipline as it is told in textbooks, but enrich geography's history by revealing grassroots stories that are frequently overlooked in academia and downplayed as ephemeral, in this case the origins of radical geography in the United States and the legacy of geographer William Bunge. The authors argue that research must follow a more inclusive, multivocal approach that consists of listening to stories and recording narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Musical lyrics can infuse semantic breath and cultural meaning to particular localities, helping to transform abstract environments into specific and definable places. Despite this, the literature of geography has been slow to conceptualize and systematically study musical lyrics as source material to decipher the social context for the production and consumption of music with any rigueur. To partially address this gap, this paper is theoretically underpinned first by more contemporary discourses on the "contested" nature intrinsic to cultural landscapes. Secondly, it draws on the small body of literature of music geography seeking to explore music as a means of exploring social-cultural contexts. Methodologically, this paper then employs discourse analysis to explore as case study the limited set of published lyrics of hole hole bushi, the music of Japanese plantation workers in late 19th century Hawai'i. Th e imagined and constructed cultural landscapes of this immigrant group are extrapolated from their own lyrical narratives to show, in example, conceptual shift s in their constructions of "landscapes of desire" and "landscapes of despair." Overall, this paper links the existing frameworks of cultural and music geography in applying musical lyrics as source material for teasing out historical narratives centered in the perception, construction, and interaction with the cultural landscapes of people in a highly contested place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore the multiple trajectories and relational politics from which Skagway, Alaska, has "become the new." I engage Skagway through a "language of movement." I tell "a story so far" about Skagway, Alaska, as a "place in motion." The paper unfolds through an ethno-historic narrative of the multiple lines of social and economic differentiation, processes of change, and numerous face-lifts Skagway has undergone since the Klondike Gold Rush on through to today's connectivity with the global cruise tourism industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motivated by a need to engage students in the critical evaluation of visual information, and by a desire to teach students how to use digital technologies as a way of exploring and expressing geographical constructs and processes, the geography departments at Arizona's three universities sought and received funding from the Arizona Board of Regents for learner-centered curricular development organized around the theme of "Mediated Geographies." In this paper, we explore how critical pedagogy and learner-centered education strategies were used to engage students in semester-long documentary and photo essay projects. Some of the student projects discussed in this essay are posted for viewing at the project Web site: http://geography.asu.edu/lukinbeal/mediated.html. This project was funded by the Arizona Board of Regents' (ABOR) Learner Centered Education Grant Program. For more information about ABOR's program, see http://www.abor.asu.edu/4_special_programs/lce/index_lce.html. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]