Fall 2014 seminar: Ph.D. candidate, Asian literature, religion, and culture
Ryan Buyco is an interdisciplinary scholar and critic who focuses on transpacific imaginaries as they relate to Okinawa, Hawai'i, and the Philippines. His critical interests concern the conceptual possibilities of the ocean as a way of disrupting area studies "land-locked" orientations. His research project empirically and theoretically explores what he terms as the "Uchinanchu Pacific" to conceptualize Okinawan diasporic culture in Hawai’i and the Philippines. Before entering the Ph.D. field of Asian literature, religion, and culture at Cornell, Buyco was a graduate student at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa where he received his M.A. in Asian studies concentrating on Okinawa, Japan, and the Philippines.