The book presentation and aftertalk will revolve around Rusha Latif’s provocative new account of Egypt’s revolutionaries—one that foregrounds their solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation as a key catalyst behind their revolt. In fact, much like the war on Gaza is radicalising legions of young people around the world today, it was the Second Palestinian Intifada in 2000 that first radicalised many of the Egyptian youth who drove the uprising ten years later, in the hope of emancipating themselves as well as their neighbours. Speaking to these interconnections , the presentation will follow the trajectory of the movement through its successes and defeats from the perspective of the Revolutionary Youth Coalition (RYC), the first and arguably most significant front born of the nationwide revolt. Timely and necessary, this talk will not only illuminate the Egyptian uprising’s leadership and organising dynamics but also impart urgent lessons from the protagonists behind this historic movement—lessons for everyone hoping to achieve liberation and revolutionary change in the 21st century.
About the speakers
Rusha Latif is a researcher and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. A first-generation Egyptian American, she traveled to Cairo in 2011 to conduct ethnographic research on the uprising. Her interests include social movements and revolutions; the study of gender, class, and race/ethnicity; Islamic studies; and Middle Eastern studies. She is the author of Tahrir’s Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution (AUC Press, 2022), an activist ethnography that explores the themes of leadership and organisation in the Egyptian revolution.
Sai Englert is a lecturer at Leiden University in The Netherlands. He is the author of Settler Colonialism: an Introduction and sits on the editorial boards of Historical Materialism and Notes from Below.
