Ryan Buyco
Assistant Professor, Ph.D. Asian Literature, Religion, and Culture
Pronouns: he/him/his
Areas of Interest
- Asian Settler Colonial Studies
- Oceanic Filipinx Studies
- 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
Dr. Ryan Buyco teaches in the fields of Filipinx, Asian American, and Pacific Islander studies. 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). Broadly, his research, writing, and teaching interests are invested in Filipino American engagements with settler colonialism and indigeneity in the Pacific. He is currently working on a book project titled Island Under the Sun: Filipino American Detours in Okinawa. This book examines travel writing, militourism, and Filipinx American critique as they relate to the ongoing colonial context of Okinawa—widely known as the “Hawai‘i of Japan.”
Prior to joining the Ethnic Studies Department at Cal Poly, Dr. Buyco was a Consortium for Faculty Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian American and Global Asian Studies at Colorado College. His work has been supported by a number of fellowships and grants which include the Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellowship for research in Okinawa and the Philippines, and the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship in Tagalog and Japanese. For more information about Dr. Buyco and his work, please see here.
Selected Publications
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/
“Afterlives of the Okinawan Community in Davao, Mindanao: Sakiyama Asao’s ‘Davao Pilgrimage’ (1997).” The International Journal of Okinawan Studies, vol. 8, 2017, pp. 27-41.