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
- Decolonial Travel Writing
- Public Scholarship
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 Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. He holds graduate degrees from Cornell University (PhD in Asian Literature, Religion, and Culture) and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (MA in Asian Studies). 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 reclaimed the genre as a creative and public scholarly practice to explore new forms of relation between Filipinx and Indigenous communities in the Pacific.
He is currently working on two projects that reflect these interests. The first is Island Under the Sun: Filipino American Detours in Okinawa, which blends the travelogue form with 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 spaces of Okinawa to consider how legacies of US empire and Japanese imperialism might shape Filipino relationalities to these islands. His second project, The Soul is an Archipelago, is a collection of lyrical travel essays that explore diasporic loss and oceanic belonging through his experiences learning and competing in the Polynesian sport of rock lifting in Tahiti, Hawaiʻi, and Aotearoa.
At Cal Poly, Ryan regularly teaches “The Filipinx American Experience,” “Introduction to Asian American Studies,” and “Cultural Production and Ethnicity.” 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 community-accountable public scholarship in Oceanic Filipinx Studies. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature, Amerasia Journal, Critical Ethnic Studies, 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 Journal, 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.