Ryan Buyco
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. Asian Literature, Religion, and Culture
Pronouns: he/him/his
Areas of Interest
- Oceanic Filipinx Studies
- Asian Settler Colonial Critique
- Travel Writing
- US Militarism in the Pacific
Contact Information
- Office: Bldg. 38, Rm. 145
- Phone: 805-756-1766
- Email: rbuyco@calpoly.edu
About Ryan Buyco
Ryan Buyco is a travel writer and an Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California. He holds graduate degrees from Cornell University (PhD in Asian Literature, Religion, and Culture) and the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (MA in Asian Studies). Ryan’s work focuses on travel writing as a decolonial practice, especially as it's informed by Filipinx engagements with settler colonialism and Indigeneity in the Pacific. This work has taken him across the ocean where he continues to learn how shared histories of colonization connect islands in the Pacific together.
Ryan is currently working on two projects. The first is Island Under the Sun: Filipino American Detours in Okinawa, which blends modern travelogue with a reflection of Asian settler colonial critique in what is often referred to as “Japan’s Hawai‘i.” In this book, Ryan guides readers through his own detours across the militarized and touristic space of Okinawa to consider how legacies of US empire and Japanese imperialism shape the relationship that Filipinos have to this place. His second project, The Soul is an Archipelago, is a lyrical travel essay that explores diasporic loss, colonization, and oceanic belonging in the Filipino diaspora.
At Cal Poly, Ryan regularly teaches “The Filipinx American Experience,” “Introduction to Asian American Studies,” and “Cultural Production and Ethnicity.” His writings have been published or forthcoming in Amerasia Journal, Critical Ethnic Studies, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, and Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Okinawa. For his current CV, please see here.
Selected Publications
“Filipinx Reflections on Travel Writing and Asian Settler Colonial Critique in Okinawa.” Amerasia Journal, special issue on “On the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of Asian Settler Colonial Critique,” vol. 51, no. 3, 2025.
Forthcoming, “Islands of Thought: Oceanic Filipinx Studies from Morro Bay to Okinawa,” Alon: Journal for Filipinx American and Diaspora Studies
“‘Finding New Routes’: Visualizing an Oceanic Okinawa in Laura Kina’s Holding On (2019),” Verge: Studies in Global Asias, vol. 9, no. 1, 2023.
“Davao Pilgrimage by Sakiyama Asao (with Translator’s Introduction).” Translated from Japanese. Critical Ethnic Studies Journal, special issue on “Center-to-Center Relationalities: At the Nexus of Pacific Island Studies and Trans-Pacific Studies,” vol. 7, no. 2, 2021: https://manifold.umn.edu/projects/ces-0702
“pacific thoughts.” 2021. positionspolitics.org. https://positionspolitics.org/pacific-thoughts/