Contact: ldavey@hawaii.edu
Office hours:by appointment
Lane "LaneSki" Davey teaches literature, creative writing, first-year composition, and religion courses as a lecturer at the University of Hawai‘i Mānoa, Hawai‘i Pacific University, and Pacific Rim Christian College. She holds two master's degrees in religion and a Ph.D. in English which focuses on the areas of literature, popular culture, life writing, and creative media.
Her dissertation "Intelligent Movement: The Dynamic, Improvised, Synchronized, Collective Overstandings of Hip Hop and He‘enalu as Language, Literature, and Literacy" advocates for performative literature to be preserved as language and form new literacies through the embrace of creative media in English studies. She draws from her background as an extreme surfer and B-Girl to form the blueprint of her DISCO pedagogy. She designed several innovative 200-level literature and creative writing courses such as He‘enalu (Surfing) "A New Wave of Creative Writing," Hip Hop Literature, Intro to Creative Writing: "The Blueprint of Hip Hop," and Digital Stories.
LaneSki started breakdancing in Seattle during the eighties when very few women were present in the scene and has been a Hip Hop advocate ever since. You can view some pictures of her in the Hip Hop collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. When she moved to Hawai‘i in 1985, she took up surfing and became Hawai‘i State Champion in 1993 after graduating from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa with a Fashion Design and Marketing Degree. Upon completion, she started her company Us Girls, designing some of the first women's boardshorts and functional swimwear for surfing. She sold her label to over fifty retail boutiques throughout the U.S Mainland and via a distributorship in Japan while surfing on the professional tour. Her fashion and digital artwork has been exhibited at B-Girl Be (Mn. 2006-2007), Graffiti Queens Art Exhibit (2021, 2022), and Empowered by Paris (2021). LaneSki is renowned for being the only girl who would paddle out to 2nd and 3rd Reef Pipeline during the early nineties to mid-200os and her prowess helped inspire the first women's surfing contest there in 2oo5.
LaneSki frequently presents her research at conferences and guest appearances such as the Conference on College Composition and Communication (2019), Hawai‘i’s First Year Writing Symposium (2021–2022), The Society for the Study of American Women Writers, Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association and The Second Bicentennial Commemoration at Hawaiian Mission Houses.
Her freelance articles have been published in an international conglomerate of ocean-centered surfing magazines such as Surfer, FreeSurf, Adventure, Slide, Five, Curl, Wet, Surf Life for Women, Tiare Girl, and a blog called "The Pipeline" that she wrote for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
LaneSki's is interested in the way performance studies and creative media intersect with English studies and aspires to forge new paths for the preservation of performative literature. She plans to publish in the fields of biography, critical surf studies, Hip Hop studies, and New Media.
Publications
“The Pipeline”Blog(Honolulu Star Advertiser) 2008 -2016
“Living the Surf Life”Blog (Oceanic CableHawai‘i) 2006 - 2010
“Hawai‘i News”Columnist (Surfing World Japan) 2005 - 2008
Freelance : FreeSurf Hawai‘i, Tiare Girl Hawai‘i, Surf Life for Women California, Pacific News Media New Zealand, Five Magazine San Francisco, Surfer Magazine California
Awards
ACADEMIC CONFERENCES
“The First Storybook Printed in the Hawaiian Language” Second Company Bicentennial Commemoration, Hawaiian Mission Houses, April 28, 2023.
“Freestylin in the First Year Writing Cypher: How Hip Hop provides a smooth transition from alphabetic text to multimodal literacies.” The UH 2022 First-Year Writing Symposium. Zoom, (upcoming March 2022).
“Floating on Adobe’s Creative Cloud in the Digital Apocalypse.” The UH 2021 First-Year Writing Symposium. Zoom, March 2021.
Palapala “Same—Same?: Syncretism and Resistance in Hawaiian Bible Translation,” College of Linguistics & Literature (LLL), University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Annual LLL Conference, 2020.
“Intelligent Movement and the Blueprint of Hip Hop: The 5 Elements (b-boying, emceeing, djing, beatboxing, graffiti) as Language, Literature and Literacy” (presenter) Conference on College Composition and Communication, David Lawrence Convention Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, March 13-16, 2019.
“Join the Cypher of Hip Hop Pedagogy and Practice!” (workshop) Conference on College Composition and Communication, David Lawrence Convention Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, March 13-16, 2019.
“Three Ripples on Performance: Across Authorship, Transgenre, and Dramatism” (chair) Conference on College Composition and Communication, David Lawrence Convention Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, March 13-16, 2019.
“Being one of da boyz & Us Girls: a collection of surf journalism by extreme surfer Lane Davey.” Université Bordeaux Montaigne, France, Society for the Study of American Women Writers (SSAWW), Bordeaux, France (July 6, 2017).
"May The Force be with You as James Baldwin unveils Ubuntu.” Chaminade University of Honolulu, Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association (PAMLA), Honolulu, Hi. (November 2017).
“Against Althusser: The Stranglehold of Interpellation on Life Writing Studies.” College of Linguistics & Literature (LLL), University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Annual LLL Conference
B-Girl Workshop. Rock the School Bells Hawai‘i, Honolulu, Hi. October 7 2017
Education
EDUCATION
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa: English Ph.D.
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa: M.A. Comparative World Religions (focus on Hawaiian Religion and biblical studies) Thesis: “The Moo Olelo of Joseph” – An analysis of the translation in the first Hawaiian Bible story
Pacific Rim Christian College M.A. Biblical Studies, Thesis: “Fully Human” – A class curriculum for the study of the historical Jesus
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa: CATHR B.S. Fashion Merchandising & Design
LANGUAGES: Hawaiian, Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Koine Greek
Courses
Summer Semester 2025
- ENG-273: Introduction to Literature: Creative Writing
Summer Semester 2024
- ENG-273: Introduction to Literature: Creative Writing
Spring Semester 2024
- ENG-100: Composition I
- ENG-200: Composition II
Fall Semester 2023
- ENG-100: Composition I
- ENG-100: Composition I