"From Tea Parties to Free Speech Zones: Activism and American Culture" will address some of the following questions: How does activism get defined and named? How do representations of activist movements shift along historical, generic, and/or ideological boundaries? Is activism inextricable from explicitly political action? How do race, gender, class, region, and other categories of identity shape activist movements? What are the relationships between popular action and "the authorities"? As well as traditionally understood forms of collective action, such as rebellions, strikes, riots, nonviolent protest, and boycotts, the conference will also engage more broadly defined forms of activism: performative, pedagogic, artistic, literary, and even eccentric.