History Department

Education

• Ph.D., and M.A., History, Stanford University
• M.A., American Civilization, Brown University
• B.A., History, Swarthmore College

About

Cecilia Tsu is a U.S. historian with research and teaching interests in Asian American history, race and ethnicity, immigration, California and the American West. Her first book, Garden of the World: Asian Immigrants and the Making of Agriculture in California’s Santa Clara Valley (Oxford University Press, 2013), is one of the first comparative historical studies of Asian immigrants in rural America. It explores the ways in which Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino immigrants transformed agricultural practices along with ideologies of race and American national identity from 1880 to 1940 in a region once celebrated around the world for its horticultural productivity, now commonly known as “Silicon Valley.” She is also the co-author of The Elusive Eden: A New History of California, 5^th edition. Professor Tsu’s current book project, Starting Over: Hmong Refugees and the Politics of Resettlement in Modern America, chronicles the evolution of Southeast Asian refugee resettlement policy and its intersection with the rise of modern conservatism in the United States from 1975 to 2000. Tsu has been the recipient of fellowships and grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, and the University of California Humanities Research Initiative. She serves as a faculty advisor for the California History-Social Science Project.

Research Focus

Asian American history, race and ethnicity, immigration, California and the American West, gender, agricultural and rural history, refugees and resettlement policy

Selected Publications

• Tsu, C., Co-author with Tamara Venit-Shelton (2025) “Chinese Americans” in Foundations and Futures: Asian American and Pacific Islander Multimedia Textbook , UCLA Asian American Studies Center.
• Tsu, C. (2024) “Reshaping Agrarian Visions: Southeast Asian Refugee Community Gardens and the Limits of Rural Continuity” in Nature Unfurled: Asian American Environmental Histories, ed. Connie Y. Chiang, University of Washington Press.
• Tsu, C. (2021) “Refugee Community Gardens and the Politics of Self-Help,” Amerasia Journal 47:1, Critical Refugee Studies Special Issue.
• Tsu, C., Co-author with Richard Orsi, Mary Ann Irwin, and Michael Magliari (2019) The Elusive Eden: A New History of California, Fifth Edition, Waveland Press.
• Tsu, C. (2017) “‘If you want to plow your field, don’t kill your buffalo to eat”: Hmong Farm Cooperatives and Refugee Resettlement in 1980s Minnesota,” Journal of American Ethnic History 36:3.
• Tsu, C. (2016) Immigration in a rural context, in Routledge History of Rural America, (Ed.) Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, Routledge.
• Tsu, C. (2013) Garden of the World: Asian Immigrants and the Making of Agriculture in California's Santa Clara Valley, Oxford University Press.
• Tsu, C. (2009) Sex, lies, and agriculture: Reconstructing Japanese immigrant gender relations in rural California, 1900-1913, Pacific Historical Review 78: 171-209.
• Tsu, C. (2006) Independent of the unskilled Chinaman: Race, labor, and family farming in California’s Santa Clara Valley, Western Historical Quarterly XXXVII: 475–495.

Teaching

Lecture Courses: History of the United States since 1865 (HIS 17B); Race in America since 1865 (HIS 18B); Becoming an American: Immigration and American Culture (HIS 173); Asian American History, 1850-present (HIS 179); America in the 1980s (HIS 174D); California History (HIS 189)

Undergraduate Seminars: Uncovering Diverse Histories of Yolo County (HIS 102M); America in the 1980s (HIS 102M); History of American Orientalism (HIS 102M); Asian American Lives: History Through Biography (HIS 102M)

Graduate Seminar: Immigration and Migration in U.S. History (HIS 202H); Readings in Twentieth Century United States History (HIS 202H); Gender, Poverty, and the Welfare State (HIS 201Q)