Auē, auē, e ke hoa! Alas, alas, our friend …
Lane Davey was a graduate student with us, earning an MA in Religion before earning a PhD in the Department of English. When she first came to our department, her previous education did not match up well with our prerequisites for admission, so she enrolled in a graduate course in Hawaiian Religion without any assurance she would one day be one of our students. Not for the last time, she surprised us. She was articulate, bright, hard-working, and wrote well. In that course, she read the thousands of pages of Hawaiian stories, discussed them intelligently, and wrote about them convincingly. She was soon accepted as a full-time student, although one of our faculty members still had doubts. In his course, she was assigned to write a detailed academic review of James G. Frazier’s classic The Golden Bough. Our colleague was so taken by surprise by its depth and penetration that he asked Lane, face to face, “Who wrote this paper?” A few minutes of discussion made it clear that it really was Lane; this plain-spoken, warm, mild-mannered surfer girl had a mind and a will that was the equal of any of us.
Over the years of studying religion with us, Lane was doing research in Hawaiian, Hebrew, and Aramaic texts, preparing the most detailed study yet of one of the earliest translations of the Bible into Hawaiian. It was always a delight to have her in class. She held her opinions firmly, never caving in, never intimidated, but always warm and respectful, and usually in ways that provoked smiles and laughter rather than rancor or resentment. She was tough-minded, never showing a false humility or deference, and yet redolent of true humility and kindness. And never, ever, did anything get in the way of surfing her beloved Pipeline. Many days she would say that the surf was flat or disappointing, but she never, ever, failed to be there to get it a try. Lane taught several courses for us: World Religions, Old Testament, and New Testament, both before and while earning her PhD in English. She was always ready with an offer for a ride, an interesting perspective on an academic or religious topic, or funny stories about her surfing/fashion-entrepreneur life. During her last months, she was impossibly tough and determined. I hope we can all be like Lane when our time comes. We will miss her. We are all unique, we all have value, but most of us are not unforgettable. Lane was that person. — By Kapali Lyon, Department of Religions & Ancient Civilizations
EDUCATION
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa: Ph.D. English Literature
“Intelligent Movement: The Dynamic, Improvised, Synchronized, Collective Overstandings of Hip Hop and He‘enalu as Language, Literature, and Literacy”
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa: M.A. Comparative World Religions
Thesis: “The Moo Olelo of Joseph” – An analysis of the translation in the first Hawaiian Bible story
Pacific Rim Christian College M.A. Christian Ministry
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
TECH: Adobe Creative Cloud: Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Premier Pro, Premier Rush, Spark, Indesign, Character Animator, Portfolio, Basic HTML 5 & CSS, WordPress, DALL-E, Adobe Firefly
Courses Taught:
REL150 World Religions
REL151 Religion and the Meaning of Existence
REL200 Hebrew Bible (Old Testament)
REL201 New Testament
ENG100 Composition I
ENG190 Composition I for Transfers
ENG270 Intro to Literary History: Hip Hop
ENG273 Introduction to Creative Writing: He’enalu (Surfing)
ENG273 Introduction to Creative Writing: Hip Hop
ENG273 Introduction to Creative Writing: Digital Stories
CM6313: Engaging the Cults
Universities:
University of Hawai‘i Mānoa
Honolulu Community College
Hawai‘i Pacific University
Pacific Rim Christian College
JOURNALISM: Honolulu Star-Advertiser, The Seattle Times, Surfer, FreeSurf, Adventure, Slide, Five, Curl, Wet, Surf Life for Women, Wahine, Tiare Girl, Surfing World Japan, Surfing Magazine, Pacific News Media, Longboarding Magazine. . .
DIGITAL ART, PERFORMANCE, AND FASHION EXHIBITS:
Women’s Wear Daily, Women’s Sports and Fitness, Baywatch, B-Girl Be, Graffiti Queens Art Exhibit, and Empowered by Paris, Smithsonian National Museum of American History
ACADEMIC CONFERENCES
“Breakin Out on the Olympics: A Disco Pedagogy, Global Conference on Hip Hop Education, California State University Long Beach, Nov. 8-10, 2023
“Breakin Out on Traditional Archives: How the Dynamic, Improvised, Synchronized, Collective Overstandings of Hip Hop will Revolutionize Traditional Archives,” Archiving Hip Hop: 50 years in the Making, The Open University UK, Sept. 28, 2023
“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. Honolulu, March 2022
“Floating on Adobe’s Creative Cloud in the Digital Apocalypse.” The UH 2021 First-Year Writing Symposium. Honolulu, March 2021.
Palapala “Same—Same?: Syncretism and Resistance in Hawaiian Bible Translation,” Annual LLL Conference, College of Linguistics & Literature (LLL), University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, 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).
B-Girl Workshop. Rock the School Bells Hawai‘i, University of Hawai’i, Honolulu, Hi. October 7, 2017.
“Against Althusser: The Stranglehold of Interpellation on Life Writing Studies.” Annual LLL Conference, College of Linguistics & Literature (LLL), University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.