In this talk, Rusha Latif will discuss her new book, Tahrir’s Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution, an activist ethnography that focuses on the themes of leadership and organization in the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Following the trajectory of the movement from the perspective of the Revolutionary Youth Coalition (RYC), the first and arguably most significant front born of the nationwide revolt, the presentation will challenge the notion that this was a purely spontaneous and leaderless uprising and highlight critical learnings from the protagonists behind this historic movement - lessons that would be missed if we accept this narrative without question.
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.