From 1909 to 1910, the public performance of soap-box oratory began to effect dramatic changes in the composition of migrant workers throughout the Pacific Northwest. Municipal authorities in Spokane attempted to curb the formation of a union of hobo orators by outlawing public speech-making within the city fire limits. The ensuing confrontation…

During the Reconstruction era, hundreds of disenfranchised women throughout the United States attempted to register and to vote, performing a participatory argument in an ongoing public controversy about the parameters of the polity. As rhetorical rituals, these women's voting efforts displayed an alternative social order and illuminated the…