"Examining political performances' spatial arrangements, casting of roles, authorization of speech, oratorical techniques, styles of movement, behavioral conventions, and audience reactions, this book shows how nineteenth-century activists innovatively connected performative forms to critical content in order to make their activism more effective"--

Tracy C. Davis is Barber Professor of Performing Arts and Professor of English and Theatre at Northwestern University. She has published books on nineteenth-century theatre, the economics and business history of theatre, performance theory, and gender and theatre. Her latest book combines these interests in a study of two generations of Victorian activists.

Introduction: History as Performance History; 1. Forms and Increments of Performance; 2. Change Making: Incrementalism; 3. Bildung: Leveraging Critique to Propel the Precarious into Political Life; 4. Combative Pens; 5. Experiments in Becoming.