Catherine

Research Expertise and Interest

Asian American history, Filipino American studies, race and gender, migration, nursing history, adoption studies

Research Description

Catherine Ceniza Choy is the author of the book, Asian American Histories of the United States (Beacon Press, 2022). The book features the themes of anti-Asian hate and violence, erasure of Asian American history, and Asian American resistance to what has been omitted in a nearly 200 year history of Asian migration, labor, and community formation in the US. It was named a Best of 2022 Nonfiction Book by Kirkus Reviews and Ms. Magazine, and featured in the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s 2023 National Day of Racial Healing book list.

Catherine's first book, Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History (2003), explored how and why the Philippines became the leading exporter of professional nurses to the United States. Empire of Care received the 2003 American Journal of Nursing History and Public Policy Book Award and the 2005 Association for Asian American Studies History Book Award. In 2023, Choy is the recipient of the Agnes Dillon Randolph Award. This award recognizes her outstanding scholarship documenting the experiences of Filipino nurses in U.S. history and the importance of that history for understanding ongoing issues in health care, including the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Filipino nurses. Her second book, Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption in America (2013), unearths the little-known historical origins of Asian international adoption in the United States beginning with the post-World War II presence of the U.S. military in Asia. Catherine is also the editor of the Brill book series Gendering the Trans-Pacific World. This book series explores the gendered nature of the Pacific World by focusing on three phenomena: diaspora, empire, and race. The inaugural volume of the book series is the anthology, Gendering the Trans-Pacific World (2017), which Catherine co-edited with Judy Tzu-Chun Wu.

An engaged public scholar, Catherine has been interviewed in many media outlets, including ABC 20/20, The Atlantic, CNN, Los Angeles Times, NBC News, New York Times, ProPublica, San Francisco Chronicle, Time, and Vox, on the disproportionate toll of COVID-19 on Filipino nurses in the United States, anti-Asian, coronavirus-related violence, and racism and misogyny.

 

In the News

America on edge: Berkeley scholars’ early election thoughts

UC Berkeley scholars awoke Wednesday, Nov. 4 to signs of a deeply divided U.S. electorate, and no blue wave on the horizon. Despite a surge in early voting, ballots were still being counted in several battleground states. As of noon that day, the race between President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden remained too close to call. 

Racist harassment of Asian health care workers won’t cure coronavirus

Violent hate crimes against Asian Americans have surged across the United States recently due to xenophobic perceptions that all Asian people are carriers of COVID-19. But some forms of harassment have been directed specifically at the Asian physicians and nurses risking their own health and safety to battle the spread of the virus in hospitals across the country.

Featured in the Media

Please note: The views and opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or positions of UC Berkeley.
May 15, 2020

California Today: Why So Many Filipino Californians Are on the Front Lines

New York Times
Jill Cowan
A 2016 survey found that in California alone nearly a fifth of registered nurses were Filipino, and today the COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting their prevalence on the frontlines. Ethnic studies professor Catherine Ceniza Choy wrote a book about the history of Filipino nurses, called Empire of Care, in which she connects their arrival in the U.S. to early-20th-century American colonialism in the Philippines. The colonizing started in 1898, she says, and it introduced an educational system that taught English and trained nurses, many of whom were brought to the U.S. after World War II to address a critical nursing shortage. "And they have continued to come, especially when there are crises," she says. For more on this topic, see our story at Berkeley News.
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