Jennifer Tuttle to present at Western History Association Conference

Jennifer Tuttle, Ph.D., Dorothy M. Healy professor of Literature and Health in the University of New England School of Arts and Humanities and 2021-2022 Ludcke Chair of Liberal Arts and Sciences, will present her research at the Western History Association (WHA) Conference on Oct. 19, as part of a roundtable on Gender and Settler Colonialism in the American West.

The roundtable participants are all contributors to a forthcoming volume of collected essays, “The Routledge Companion to Gender and the American West.”

Tuttle's presentation, "Writing the Rails in Edith Eaton's West," concerns a 1905 serial travelogue published by the Eurasian author Eaton under the pen-name of a Chinese merchant from Los Angeles.

Passing as a man in print, Eaton likely would have passed as white during the train journey she recounts in the narrative. Tuttle's paper considers the implications of these actions within the larger context of the Chinese Exclusion era during which Eaton lived. 

This panel will be delivered online as part of the virtual portion of the WHA's annual conference, which meets this year in Portland, Oregon.