Stacey Liou

Stacey Liou is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Florida. Her research focuses on the politics of protest, the public sphere, and democratic culture, and she has additional interests in spatial politics, rhetoric and language, and social and cultural theory. Stacey’s forthcoming book, Unruly Acts: Protest, Riot, and the Politics of Interpretation (Cambridge University Press), examines how protests are practiced, interpreted, and contested. Drawing on detailed case studies, it analyzes the ways protesters’ actions and publics’ interpretations shape whether and how protests are seen as legitimate political acts.

While at the Ash Center, Stacey will analyze how concepts of rioting – and, with them, the boundaries of proper collective political action – have shifted over time. Drawing upon three case studies of major riots in U.S. history, the project moves beyond conventional accounts of rioting to examine the politics of labelling a street gathering a “riot.” Based on this genealogical work, she will argue that the “riot” label reveals how audiences understand and define the boundaries of their political community