Ryan Buyco
Associate Professor, Ph.D. Asian Literature, Religion, and Culture
Pronouns: he/him/siya
Areas of Interest
- Oceanic Filipinx Studies
- Asian Settler Colonial Critique
- Decolonial Travel Writing
- Transpacific Studies
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 Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. He lives and works on the ancestral lands of the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe, where the first U.S. landing of Filipinos took place in 1587. He earned his Ph.D. in Asian Literature, Religion, and Culture from Cornell University and an M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. A literary scholar by training, Ryan has spent years critiquing travel writing as a genre implicated in the colonial project. In recent years, however, he has been working to reclaim travel writing as a creative and scholarly practice to explore emergent forms of Filipinx-Indigenous relationalities in the Pacific.
He is currently working on two projects that reflect these interests. The first is The Soul is an Archipelago, a collection of lyrical travel essays exploring diasporic loss, the legacies of colonization, and oceanic belonging through his experiences learning and competing in the amora’a ‘ōfa’i—the ancestral sport of Polynesian rock lifting—in Tahiti, Hawai‘i, and Aotearoa. His second project, Island Under the Sun: Filipino American Detours in Okinawa, is a travelogue that brings Filipinx American studies and Asian settler colonial critique to what is often referred to as “Japan’s Hawaiʻi.” In this book, Ryan guides readers through his own detours across Okinawa’s militarized and tourist landscapes to reflect on how the continuities of U.S. empire and Japanese imperialism shape Filipino relationalities with these islands.
Ryan was born in Stockton, California, and traces his family’s genealogy to Iloilo, Toboso, and Manila. He is the recipient of the 2026 Public Scholarship Award from the Filipino Studies Section of the Association for Asian American Studies in recognition of his place-based, community-accountable contributions to Oceanic Filipinx Studies. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature, Amerasia Journal, Critical Ethnic Studies, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, and Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Okinawa, among others.
Selected Publications
“The Soul is an Archipelago,” Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature, no. 17, 2026.
“Filipinx Reflections on Travel Writing and Asian Settler Colonial Critique in Okinawa,” Amerasia Journal, special issue on “Assemblages 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, special issue on “Center-to-Center Relationalities: At the Nexus of Pacific Island Studies and Trans-Pacific Studies,” vol. 7, no. 2, 2021.
“pacific thoughts.” 2021. positionspolitics.org.