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Jennifer Tuttle, Dorothy M. Healy Professor of Literature and Associate Professor of English, delivered two papers at the recent Modern Language Convention held Jan. 5-8, 2012, in Seattle, WA.  The first presentation, “Illness and Assimilation in Emma Wolf’s California,” was offered as part of a panel on Jewish American Literature and the Pacific Rim and analyzed how novelist Wolf invoked medical tourism to argue for Jews' cultural assimilation.  Tuttle's other talk, "Nervous Bodies and Unsettled Borders:  Transgressive Citizenship in Edith Eaton’s West,” focused on the first self-identified Chinese American writer, who used medical themes to contest exclusionary policies toward the Chinese in California.  This second paper was delivered on a panel about transgression in literatures of the American West.  These presentations are part of Tuttle's book manuscript focusing on California women writers' uses of medical theory and rhetoric at the turn of the last century.