Resumen

FLORES, Matías G.. Amanda Labarca: Work and Manifest and Latent Contributions to Community Engagement. En-clav. pen [online]. 2024, vol.18, n.35, e643.  Epub 11-Mar-2024. ISSN 2594-1100.  https://doi.org/10.46530/ecdp.v0i35.643.

Amanda Labarca (1886-1975) was an educator and leader of the Chilean feminist movement. In 1922 she became the first woman to hold a university professor position in Chile. This article recovers Labarca’s trajectory as a scholar, particularly her contributions to community engagement in Chile and Latin America. Through historical research based on archival analysis (transcripts of meetings and conferences, speeches, interviews to media and oral history, and letters) and secondary sources (books and articles), it reviews her participation in community engagement projects from 1907 until her retirement in 1955, at Universidad de Chile. Then, three manifest and latent contributions to the concept of community engagement are identified. The distinction between the manifest and the latent allows us to highlight those less explicit elements in her work and more original ones. Her manifest contribution is to understand community engagement as nation-building, pedagogical and democratizing action. The latent contribution is to approach community engagement as an innovation and dispute, an object of study, and part of a global dialogue. The conclusions outline questions that challenge scholars who continue to carry out community engagement today.

Palabras llave : Community engagement; third mission; history of universities; Universidad de Chile; Latin American universities.