Catherine Ceniza Choy
My major research interests focus on the U.S. global presence in Asian countries, Asian migrations to the United States, and the impact of trans-Pacific migration on American and Asian societies. My first book, Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History, explored how and why the Philippines became the world’s leading exporter of nurses. My second book, Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption in America, was recently published by NYU Press in October 2013. In the last fifty years, transnational adoption—specifically, the adoption of Asian children—has exploded in popularity as an alternative path to family making. Despite the cultural acceptance of this practice, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the factors that allowed Asian international adoption to flourish. Global Families unearths the little-known historical origins of Asian international adoption in the United States. I am currently working on three book projects that feature biographies of Filipino American women; cultural production about Asian international adoption; and the writing of ethnic studies scholar and historian Ronald Takaki.
Education
Ph.D., History, University of California, Los Angeles, June 1998
M.A., History, University of California, Los Angeles, 1993
B.A., History, cum laude, Pomona College, Claremont, 1991
Research interests
Asian American history, Philippine and Filipino American studies, contemporary U.S. immigration, and nursing history
Selected publications
Books
Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption in America. New York, NY: NYU Press, 2013. Published in the series “Nation of Newcomers” edited by Matthew Jacobson and Werner Sollors. 240 pp.
Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003. Published in the series “American Encounters/Global Interactions” edited by Gilbert M. Joseph and Emily S. Rosenberg, and co-published in the Philippines in May 2003 by Ateneo de Manila University Press. 257 pp.
Selected Articles and Essays
“On Desire and Dislocation in Fragmented Histories,” part of the collaborative piece “Desire and Dislocation: Asian International Transracial Adoptee Cultural Production and Mixed Race Identity Discourse” with Greg Choy, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, Christina Mazza, and Jared Rehberg in the special issue, “Mixed Race Is An Inbox,” of The Asian American Literary Review 4:2 (Fall 2013): 42-45
“Nurses Across Borders: Foregrounding International Migration in Nursing History,” Nursing History Review 18:1 (2010), 12-28.
“Memory Works: Re-imagining Loss in First Person Plural, Bontoc Eulogy, and History and Memory,” Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Korean Adoption Studies, Seoul, Korea August 2010, 129-145. (co-authored with Gregory Paul Choy)
“Race at the Center: The History of American Cold War Asian Adoption,” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 16:3 (2009): 1-20.
“Institutionalizing International Adoption: The Historical Origins of Korean Adoption in the United States,” in International Korean Adoption: A Fifty-Year History of Policy and Practice, eds. Kathleen Ja Sook Bergquist, M. Elizabeth Vonk, Dong Soo Kim, and Marvin D. Feit (Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press, 2007), 25-42.
“Towards Trans-Pacific Social Justice: Women and Protest in Filipino American History,” Journal of Asian American Studies 8.3 (Fall 2005), 293-307 and reprinted in Unequal Sisters: An Inclusive Reader in U.S. Women’s History, 4th edition, ed. Vicki Ruiz (New York: Routledge, 2007), 563-571.
“A Filipino Woman in America: The Life and Work of Encarnacion Alzona,” Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture 3 (Fall 2006), 127-140.
“What Lies Beneath: Reframing Daughter from Danang,” in Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption, eds. Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin (Cambridge: South End Press, 2006), 221-231. (co-authored with Gregory Paul Choy)
“Salvaging the Savage: On Representing Filipinos and Remembering American Empire,” inScreaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images, ed. M. Evelina Galang (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2003), 35-49.
“Transformative Terrains: Korean American Adoptees and the Social Constructions of an American Childhood,” in The American Child, eds. Caroline Levander and Carol Singley (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 262-279. (co-authored with Gregory Paul Choy)
Book Chapters
“Pedagogical Crossroads: On Teaching and Conducting Research in Asian American History,” in The Feedback Loop: Historians Talk about the Links Between Research and Teaching, ed. Antoinette Burton (American Historical Association, 2013), 75-82
“Institutionalizing International Adoption: The Historical Origins of Korean Adoption in the United States,” in International Korean Adoption: A Fifty-Year History of Policy and Practice, eds. Kathleen Ja Sook Bergquist, M. Elizabeth Vonk, Dong Soo Kim, and Marvin D. Feit (Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press, 2007), 25-42
Co-authored with Gregory Paul Choy, “What Lies Beneath: Reframing Daughter from Danang,” in Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption, eds. Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin (Cambridge: South End Press, 2006), 221-231
“Salvaging the Savage: On Representing Filipinos and Remembering American Empire,” in Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images, ed. M. Evelina Galang (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2003), 35-49
Co-authored with Gregory Paul Choy, “Transformative Terrains: Korean American Adoptees and the Social Constructions of an American Childhood,” in The American Child, eds. Caroline Levander and Carol Singley (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003), 262-279
Selected Media Coverage
Interviewed in Momo Chang, “Substandard Care: Despite being valued and essential members of the American RN workforce, Filipino nurses must still often challenge and overcome bias and discrimination,” National Nurse (October 2011): 14-19.
Interviewed in Catherine A. Traywick, “Medical Malpractice?: Filipino rurses fight back against discrimination in the workplace,” Hyphen (Issue 24).
San Francisco Chronicle Pinoy Podcast interview, “‘Empire of care’ supplies steady stream of Pinoy nurses to U.S.,” March 2007.
Honors & Awards
- UC Berkeley Faculty Research Grant, 2012-2013
- Organization of American Historians Japanese Residencies Program Winner, June 2011
- Institute for International Studies Mini-Conference Grant, Spring 2011
- Abigail Reynolds Hodgen Publication Fund, 2011
- UC Berkeley Faculty Research Grant, 2009-2010
- UC Berkeley Mellon Project Grant, 2008-2009
- UC Berkeley Humanities Research Fellowship, 2008-2009
- UC Berkeley Townsend Center for the Humanities Initiative Grant, 2007
- Edith Kreeger Wolf Distinguished Visiting Professor, Northwestern University, 2005
- History Book Award, Association for Asian American Studies for Empire of Care, 2005
- Honorable Mention, American Studies Association Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize for Empire of Care, 2004
- American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award in History and Public Policy for Empire of Care, 2003
Courses
Undergraduate Courses
- AAS 20A. Introduction to the History of Asians in the United States
- AAS 124. Filipino American History
- ES 135AC. Contemporary U.S. Immigration
- AAS 175. Contemporary Narratives on the United States and the Philippines
- ES190. Narrating Race, Health, and Nation
Graduate Courses
- ES 200. Critical Terms and Issues in Comparative Ethnic Studies
- ES 201. History and Narrativity: Theories and Methodologies