What role can the university play in the broader community or society in which it is embedded? Must it remain segregated in the halls of science and knowledge, which tower above the community? This book examines the growing number of questions and concerns around university-community relations by exploring widely accepted theories and practices and placing them under new light. From a shared point of agreement that the university is an institution which should move beyond the production of higher knowledge for power elites, the contributors provide critical reflections and reports on efforts to bring about change in the canonic discourse or power-biased attitudes in universities throughout the Northern Hemisphere and Australia. The central message is that the strengthening of direct relations between universities and communities is vital to the construction of social capital and to the opening of universities to society. These are processes to be advanced on both local and international levels, as they involve democratizing rather than corporatizing, extending the reach of our educational process, sharing knowledge, resources, and expertise and reinforcing community decision-making and problem-solving capacity. How these processes of change develop and unfold within a number of universities in a wide range of countries is the story told in this book. This book will appeal to a wide readership, from students and community activists looking to make education meaningful and cooperative, to educational policy makers, members of the professoriate, and academic administrators, seeking to sustain withering institutions and provide vision for new program developments. Contributors include: M.A. Almiron, N. Bibu, J. Blanco Lopez, R. Buber, D. Campbell, M.J. Casa-Nova, G. Csepeli, A. de Pree, A. Feinsod, G. Franger, N. Georgeou, B. Haas, Z. Haberman, G. Hegyesi, S. Herran, E. Ivanova, A. Koever, M. Lisetchi, R.A. Lohmann, S. Mackerle-Bixa, M. Meyer, J.P. Murray, D. Pendleton, D. Perry, P. Rameder, M. Rawsthorne, B. Sporn, K. Talyigas, C. Winkle

"Here's another book about Frida Kahlo, and this one doesn't feature even a single original painting. What it does contain are encounters with her- curious, moving, or just fun - from around the world. From Frida fashion dolls to little clay Friditas, all of us at some point have encountered the countless souvenirs, images and mementos that reinvent the great Mexican artist, and keep her alive in popular memory. Her own painting was steeped in Mexican folk art, and the connection has turned out to be curiously reciprocal. Popular artists - not just in Mexico but around the world - have been inspired by her life, art, and persona, to come up with extraordinary and at times very curious tributes to her. The ways in which she is repeatedly re-labeled and re-invented is unprecedented in the world of art. Is this global appropriation of Frida as an icon - Fridamania - just commercial kitsch? Or is there another way of thinking about the phenomenon? Featuring a staggering variety of Frida objects, images and mementoes in every conceivable material, this book traces some of the trails that Frida herself laid... a legacy which allows people to create their own countless versions of her. "