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In a political era marked by mass public gatherings - from streets awash with bodies to school encampments - why have some been seen as protests, and therefore merit public consideration, while others are dismissed as senseless riots? In Unruly Acts, Stacey Liou argues that common ideas of protest overlook the crucial role that public audiences play in making sense of street gatherings and, as a result, misunderstand the politics of protest. Drawing on original archival research about two controversial gatherings in contemporary US politics, she explains how a protest's meanings are created not only by protestors' words and actions, but also by disagreements between protesters and their myriad audiences. These public interpretations and disagreements, Liou reveals, are conditioned by criteria about a protest''s physical, collective, and emotional character. Unruly Acts is a timely examination of the politics of interpretation and the contested social relations that lie at the heart of protest.