Liberal Lives and Activist Repertoires

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.

'With her distinctive form of precision historiography, Tracy Davis has given us a vital and necessary addendum to the long history and ongoing project of abolitionism. Focusing primarily on the lives and work of three Victorians, Davis elaborates a theory of performance that situates seemingly minor forms of activism - hosting dinners and attending meetings, letter-writing campaigns, journalistic reportage, and speechifying - as fundamental to the cultivation of solidarity and to the momentum of political engagement. This is a wonderful book: meticulously researched, compellingly argued, and beautifully narrated.' Patrick Anderson, University of California, San Diego