Catherine Ceniza Choy

Catherine Ceniza Choy is the author of the forthcoming book, Asian American Histories of the United States, from Beacon Press in their ReVisioning History book series in August 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. Choy argues that Asian American experiences are essential to any understanding of US history and its existential crises of the early twenty-first century.

An engaged public scholar, Choy has been interviewed and had her research cited in many media outlets, including ABC 2020, The Atlantic, CNN, Los Angeles Times, NBC News, New York Times, ProPublica, San Francisco Chronicle, and Vox, on anti-Asian, coronavirus-related hate and violence, the disproportionate toll of COVID-19 on Filipino nurses in the United States, and racism and misogyny in the March 16, 2021 Atlanta murders.

Choy’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. Her second book, Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption in America (2013), unearthed 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. Choy also co-edited the anthology, Gendering the Trans-Pacific World (2017), with Judy Tzu-Chun Wu. She is the editor of the Brill book series Gendering the Trans-Pacific World, an editorial board member of the journal Social History of Medicine, and an advisory board member of the NHPRC (National Historical Publications and Records Commission)-Mellon Planning Grants for Collaborative Digital Editions in African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and Native American History and Ethnic Studies Program.

Choy is Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Justice in UC Berkeley’s Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS). She is a former Department Chair of Ethnic Studies (2012-2015, 2018-2019) and a former Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies Division (2019-2021). She received her Ph.D. in History from UCLA and her B.A. in History from Pomona College. The daughter of Filipino immigrants, she was born and raised in New York City. She lives in Berkeley with her husband Greg Choy and their two children.