1. The objective of the multi-institutional, international, and interdisciplinary team project, CECMS: Comparative Central and East European Culture and Media Studies, is the research and analysis of contemporary culture and media in the regions of the European Union of its eastward expansion starting with 2004. The project is in response to the recognition that culture ought to be a major factor in the shaping of the European Union in addition to an economics-driven construct. The results of the project are scholarly books published in hard copy in English and in German with tandem versions on the world wide web and on DVD. A debated notion, Central and East Europe is defined here as a geographical region stretching from the former East Germany (Mitteldeutschland) to Austria, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Poland, the Baltic countries, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, the Ukraine, etc., thus including the Habsburg lands and German influence and their spheres of interest at various times including now. An "imagined" (Anderson) and "in-between peripheral" (Totosy) landscape of culture and history, since 1989-90 and the end of the Soviet empire the countries of Central and East Europe have engaged in a restructuring of their political, economic, social, and cultural environments and societies. While this reshaping of the region is still on-going, there is a new Central and East Europe in place now, politically, socially, economically, and culturally, and it is the situation, achievements, and shortcomings of this new Central and East Europe that the project is designed to study. For a bibliography re the study of Central and East European culture see Steven Totosy de Zepetnek,"Selected Bibliography for the Study of Central European Culture" in Comparative Central European Culture, Ed. Steven Totosy de Zepetnek (West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2002. 189-206 <http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/series/compstudies.asp> & <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/ccs-purdue.html>); online version in CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture (Library) (2002-): <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/library/centraleuropeanculture(bibliography).html>; for a bibliography in comparative cultural studies, see Steven Totosy de Zepetnek, Steven Aoun, and Wendy C. Nielsen, "Bibliography for Work in Comparative Cultural Studies (History, Theory, Method)" in Comparative Literatue and Comparative Cultural Studies, Ed. Steven Totosy de Zepetnek (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2003. 285-342), online version in CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture (Library) (2002-): <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/library/comparativeculturalstudies(biblio).html>.

2. The Halle-Wittenberg project CECMS: Comparative Central and East European Culture and Media Studies is a continuation of comparative work on Central and East European culture initiated and organized by Steven Totosy <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/totosycv.html>, including gatherings such as the invitational conference Central European Culture Today hosted by the Canadian Centre for Austrian and Central European Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada (1999), the symposium Comparative Culture and Hungarian Studies at the 24th Annual Conference of the American Hungarian Educators' Association at John Carroll University in Cleveland, USA (1999), and the symposium Comparative Cultural Studies and Post-1989 Central European Culture of the Hungarian Discussion Group at the annual convention of the MLA: Modern Language Association of America in Washington, D.C., USA (2000), whose selected papers are published in Comparative Central European Culture, Ed. Steven Totosy de Zepetnek (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2002) in volume one of the Purdue series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies (see at <http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/series/compstudies.asp> & <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/ccs-purdue.html>), and most recently symposia in Comparative Cultural Studies Totosy organized at The Contemporaneousness of the Non-Contemporaneous, an international conference hosted by the Research Institute for Austrian and International Literature and Cultural Studies <http://www.inst.at> in Vienna, Austria (2002).

3.The areas of study and activities in team and interdisciplinary work of CECMS: Comparative Central and East European Culture and Media Studies are as follows:
    3.1 Central and East European culture and new media. Team chairs Steven Totosy (Halle-Wittenberg and Boston), Carmen Andras (Targu Mures), Gerd Lampe (Halle-Wittenberg), and Marko Juvan (Ljubljana) re aspects of literature, film, and new media including two international conferences -- October 2004 in Halle and Leipzig, Germany and October 2005 in Prague, the Czech Republic -- with the participation of film directors and new media artists and writers and poets around the theme of Central and East European culture and new media;
    3.2 Culture policy and the politics of culture in education, the media, and new media. Team chairs Steven Totosy (Halle-Wittenberg and Boston), Bela Rasky (Budapest), Judy Young (Ottawa), Magdalena Marsovszky (Munich and Viadrina), Marko Juvan (Ljubljana) and Clemens Seyfried (Linz) re the culture policies, history(ies) of culture policy, and the politics of culture in the fields of education, the media, and new media, here understood in a conceptual context as related fields. In the study of culture policy and the politics of culture, the study of gender, media, and new media is of particular focus and a symposium is taking place on the topic within the conference The Unifying Aspect of Cultures, organized and hosted by the Research Institute for Austrian and International Literature and Cultural Studies <http://www.inst.at/kulturen/konf2003_sektionen_english.htm>, 7-9 November 2003, in Vienna, Austria. For the calls for papers for the symposia on Gender and Media and Culture Policy and the Administration of Culture link to <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/library/clcwebcallsforpapers.html>;
    3.3 Theoretical framework and methodology. Team chairs Steven Totosy (Halle-Wittenberg and Boston) and Reinhold Viehoff (Halle-Wittenberg) re theoretical concepts and definitions of culture, e.g., what are definitions of "culture" in various countries of the region as defined and to develop a data base of culture products where the notion(s) of a Central (and East) European culture is implicitly and/or explicitly contained;
    3.4 The Cultures of Post-1989 Central and East Europe. In many ways a preparatory step and "initiation" of the project is the international conference,The Cultures of Post-1989 Central and East Europe, to be held 21-24 August 2003 in Targu-Mures, Romania, and organized by Steven Totosy, Carmen Andras, and Magdalena Marsovszky. For further detail including the program of the conference link to <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/library/centraleuropeconference(2003).html>;
    3.5 Peter Greeneway's The Tulse Luper Germany Network. Team chair Steven Totosy (Halle-Wittenberg and Boston), Uli Kühnle (College of Art, Burg Giebichenstein), and Gerd Lampe (Halle-Wittenberg) re film director Peter Greenaway's Tulse Luper Germany Network project with groups in Rotterdam, Leipzig, Berlin, Halle, etc., Team Halle researches and selects the material for DVD Gold, followed by storage in an electronic database with the capacity of sorting the material and searching through the database with the appropriate software programs. The Tulse Luper project by Peter Greenaway includes the production of several types of media such as film, video game, DVD, and book, all about the fictional character Tulse Luper created by Greenaway and the history of the gold taken from Jews during the nazi regime. Much of the narrative takes places and is about Jews and events in Central and East Europe. Parallel to the research and selection of the film material, selection is made of material about gold as based on and extended from material in the films to textual, visual (pictures, photography, painting, animation), and sound material, that is, cultural products. The Halle DVD Gold is with focus on the visual, that is, mainly although not exclusively the cinematic: it contains material of cultural expression based on a set of films of various genres represented in hypermedia with the overall theme of gold. The research and design of the material in the final product of DVD Gold requires a full range of expertise including technical matters, expertise of and knowledge about the aesthetic of the visual in traditional art and new media as well as an advanced level of knowledge of culture in a global and international context. Further, Team Halle is with expertise to reflect on theoretical matters such as the consequences and results of the different ways of access to and participation with new media art including hypertext, various theories and applicabilities of cognition, processes of cultural knowledge, aspects of audience and reception, etc. The task of the Halle project is to produce an interactive multimedia DVD with the theme of gold in the mode of NMAP: New Media Audience Participation. NMAP is defined as audience participatory activity and interaction with various and multiple forms of cultural expression (cultural, aesthetic, entertainment, pedagogical, etc.) in new media such as DVD, interactive television, and the web (see Steven Totosy, "Toward a Framework of Audience Studies" [2000]: <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/library/audiencestudies.html>). DVD Gold in the mode of NMAP allows for access to and participation with the material in a variety of ways thus providing a range of aesthetic, cultural, entertainment, as well as knowledge-based experiences. In practice, NMAP occurs in the following varieties: 1) by taking one of several guided tours through the material, 2) by the following of links provided but based on the participants own objectives and interests, 3) by random browsing through links, 4) by using the search engine of the DVD, participants search and then follow paths/links based on specific interests. The material on DVD Gold itself and its use in NMAP represent an innovative cultural product in itself. The objective of the Halle project of DVD Gold is not only the sourcing, structuring, and the implicit narration of filmic and other textual and visual materials based on Greenaway's material and concept of Tulse Luper but parallel to the contents of the DVD it is the development, implementation, and the use of NMAP with cultural and aesthetic as well as marketable entertainment value. Also, DVD Gold is thought of as a prototype of new media where a high level of sensitisation occurs in NMAP with regard to new media aesthetics.

4. Academic institutions currently partnering in the project are:
    5.1 Halle Institute of Media and the Department of Media and Communication Studies <http://www.medienkomm.uni-halle.de>, University of Halle-Wittenberg, Rudolf Breitscheid Street 10, D-06110 Halle (Saale), Germany. Contact: Prof.Dr. Steven Totosy de Zepetnek <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/totosycv.html> <totosy@medienkomm.uni-halle.de> 49-(0)345-55-23632 10 April to 13 July at Halle-Wittenberg & 1-781-729-1680 14 July to 19 August in Boston.
    5.2 Institute of Slovenian Literature and Literary Sciences, Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Novi trg 5, SI-1000 Ljubljana. Contact: Prof.Dr. Darko Dolinar <dd@zrc-sazu.si> 386-(0)1-241-1382
    5.3 The Institute for East and South-East Europe, Austrian Science and Research Liaison Office, Uri utca 53, H-1014 Budapest, Hungary. Contact: Dr Bela Rasky <bela.rasky@univie.ac.at> 36-1-375-6846
    5.4 The Georghe Sincai Institute for Social Sciences and the Humanities <http://www.tg-mures.roedu.net/ICSU/> of the Romanian Academy of Sciences, Bolyai Street 17, 4300 Targu Mures, Romania. Contact: Prof.Dr. Grigore Ploesteanu <icsu_ms@fx.ro> 40-265-160-238

5. The project's objectives include the building of an international network of scholars in Europe, Canada, the USA, and beyond and colleagues interested in participating in the project are invited to contact Steven Totosy (see in 6. below). The project is intended to be submitted for funding and institutions of higher learning interested to partner with the project are invited to contact Steven Totosy (see in 6. below).

6. Project office is at HIM: Halle Institute of Media, in co-operation with the Department of Media and Communication Studies <http://www.merdienkomm.uni-halle.de/institut/>, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg <http://www.uni-halle.de/MLU/index_e.htm>, Rudolf-Breitscheid-Strasse 10, D-06110 Halle <http://www.halle.de/>, Germany. Project head is Prof. Dr. Steven Totosy de Zepetnek (Curriculum Vitae and list of selected publications at <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/totosycv.html>), e-mail: <totosy@medienkomm.uni-halle.de>, phone: 49-(0)345-55-23632. Residence 8 Sunset Road, Winchester (at Boston), Massachusetts 01890 USA, phone: 1-781-729-1680.

to top of page