Catherine Ceniza Choy, Associate Professor

Office: 526 Barrows
Email: ceniza@berkeley.edu
Phone: 642-8002
Office hours: Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:30-3:30pm

I am currently writing a book on the history of Asian international adoption in the United States entitled "Global Families," which is under contract with New York University Press. While recent books claim that adoption is transforming America, the international turn in American adoption—its historical origins in U.S. wars in Asia, the controversial rise of its popularity in the United States, and the emergent body of cultural production by adult Asian international adoptees—is poorly documented. "Global Families" explores the international adoption of Japanese children by American families in the post-World War II period and of Korean, Chinese, and Vietnamese children during the Cold War. It analyzes the distinctive role that this history plays in expanding what counts as Asian American experience and identity and in confronting the contradictions of U.S. immigration history. I am also working on another book project that features biographies of Filipino American women. “In No Man’s Shadow: The Filipino Woman in America,” proposes that these life histories provide an illuminating lens to view the rise of the United States as a world power as well as the social, economic, and political impact of the Philippine diaspora on American life.

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

Courses

Undergraduate Courses
AAS 20A. Introduction to the History of Asians in the United States
AAS 175. Contemporary Narratives on the United States and the Philippines
AAS 124. Filipino American History
ES 135AC. Contemporary U.S. Immigration
ES190. Narrating Race, Health, and Nation
Graduate Courses
ES 201. History and Narrativity: Theories and Methodologies
ES 200. Critical Terms and Issues in Comparative Ethnic Studies

Courses in 2009-2010
Fall: AAS 124. Filipino American History
ES 135AC. Contemporary U.S. Immigration
Spring: AAS 20A. Introduction to the History of Asians in the United States
ES 201. History and Narrativity: Theories and Methodologies

Selected publications

BOOK
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.

JOURNAL ARTICLES
"A Filipino Woman in America: The Life and Work of Encarnacion Alzona," Genre: Forms of Discourse and Culture 3 (Fall 2006), 127-140.

"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.

BOOK CHAPTERS
"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.

Honors & Awards

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
Association of American University Women Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship, 2002