Continuum and the legacy of Brian Shoesmith and Tom O’Regan: a memorial issue

This special issue is dedicated to the memory and work of Brian Shoesmith and Tom O’Regan, the founding editors of Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, who sadly passed away within months of each other in 2020. At the time of his passing, Brian Shoesmith was Adjunct Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Edith Cowan University (ECU), Perth, Australia, where he is credited with developing the media department where he had worked for more than thirty years.¹ In more recent years, he was also appointed as Dean for Academic Development and as Senior Advisor for Strategic Planning, Board of Trustees of the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB). Tom O’Regan was Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Previously, Tom had held Australian leadership positions at Murdoch University and Griffith University. Tom was Australia’s UNESCO Professor of Communication from 2001 to 2003. Both Brian and Tom had held senior leadership roles. Both had been Heads of School, Deans, and significantly are widely commended as being pioneers in the field. This special memorial issue brings together a range of notable academics that share their recollections, critical insights and engaging tributes to these pioneering scholars and mentors.

I commenced working with Continuum in 2005, upon Brian’s warm invitation. Brian had mentioned that I had the youthful enthusiasm and spirit of Alan McKee, a former editor of the journal who had also worked at Edith Cowan University, and who Brian has commented ‘did a brilliant job’ (Shoesmith 2009, 141). Brian, like Tom, has always been a keen supporter of new scholars. Continuum’s connection with Edith Cowan dates back to ten-year prior. Brian had taken over the management and senior leadership of the journal in 1995 as a result of an agreement made between Tom and him back in 1991. Tom’s efforts were critical in establishing the theoretical foundations of the journal since its formation in 1987. In Brian’s words ‘Tom had the knack of identifying important issues and putting together what have proved to be seminal works on matters such as multiculturalism and the electronic arts’ (Shoesmith 2006, 2).

When Brian took over management, the journal moved to Edith Cowan University from Murdoch University, where Tom had worked. At that time, I had known Brian for a few years as a result of my employment at ECU. By 2006 I was one of the editors, alongside Mark Gibson. One of my first early editorial decisions was to include a special issue on the politics of the body and on ficto-critical writing, with a celebration of women’s voices. Brian trusted my opinion and valued my judgement. He has been quoted as saying, ‘Panizza’s position is significant because it means Continuum is no longer a boys’ club an accusation we had to deal with on some occasions’ (Shoesmith 2009, 142). I have also been interested in championing special issues and articles on experiences of gender, feminism, race and activism, which, it is worth noting, have been the most downloaded articles from the journal. Alongside this I have supported special issues, in the long tradition of Continuum, which allows for guest editors to focus on themes, it also follows the interventionist strategy of the journal by highlighting work in media and cultural studies that need to be addressed.

I have been editor, now, for over fifteen years and I have ensured that Continuum follows the established practice of being ‘an assertive and pro-active journal’, in seeking special issues and authors to publish (King and Williams 2015, 303). This sentiment is also shared by my incredibly hard-working current editorial team: John Tebbutt, Tim Laurie and Jess Taylor.² I credit Tim for putting together the special section on Manus Prison Poetics (2018), which includes the rhetorical response ‘Manus prison poetics/our voice: revisiting “A Letter From Manus Island”, a reply to Anne Surma’ from Behrouz Boochani, activist and an award-winning writer, to Anne Surma’s article ‘In a different voice: “a letter from Manus Island” as poetic manifesto’. The championing of the personal voice and the agenda setting (alongside human right issues), in the aforementioned issue is also an example of how Continuum still stands as a place for dialogue.

I owe my longevity with Continuum and the journal’s success to Brian’s mentoring. Brian was always keen to hear my ideas and gave me the freedom to follow them through, and these are qualities that I also follow. There is great reward in supporting the academic pursuits of others, whilst also contributing to the direction of media and cultural studies. With six issues per year, Continuum serves as a catalyst for emerging trends and a place for new and established scholars from across the world, an emphasis that the current editorial team is keen to pursue. Those who are editors realize that it is hard work and it is often extremely undervalued in the university system. I was recently told I should not expend my energy editing a journal, and that I am sacrificing my own time to support others. In this view, the civic, nurturing, international and collegial role of editorship is undermined. Furthermore, the value of mentoring, mediating and facilitating is maligned. This Memorial Issue to Brian and Tom is a testament to the value of the positive and selfless nature of being an academic. These attributes are highlighted as we hear from many scholars about the generous mentorship, alongside engaged scholarship that Brian and Tom have inspired in others, especially the generation of scholars that has followed them.

In this Memorial Issue, Rachmah Ida, Professor at Airlangga University, Surabaya, Indonesia, provides valuable insights into the depth of Brian’s mentoring. She discusses the significant impact of his research work alongside his pedagogical leadership at ECU has had on her own academic trajectory, to the extent that it strongly influenced her restructuring of the media department at her university, which became the first in Indonesia to teach reception-based audience studies and cultural studies. Brian’s legacy in media education and theory in Bangladesh is also discussed by Professor Fahmidul Haq. Brian is credited with building the media and journalism department at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) helping it to become one of the best private universities in the country. Brian did this by mentoring the faculty, developing pedagogy and leading scholarship. He achieved all of this after he ‘retired’ from ECU, and as Brian put it in the ‘twilight’ of his career (Shoemsmith 2009, 142). Professor Ned Rossiter, recalls ECU in the late 1980s and 1990s. Ned discusses the significance of Brian’s intellectual engagement and scholarly work with great insights into the depth of Brian’s work as an academic and mentor. Brian had supervised and mentored many early-career academics from various regions of the world, and many of them now hold senior positions. For example, Professor of Media Studies, Mark Deuze from the University of Amsterdam sought Brian’s mentoring when he was a postgraduate student in South Africa. As many can attest, including myself, Brian was always keen to share his knowledge with young scholars and his advice was always welcomed. Noel King has commented that, ‘in addition to playing a pivotal role in the introduction of media and film studies at secondary and tertiary levels in Western Australia during the 1960s and 1970s, Shoesmith also championed screen culture and media history’ (2009, 38). Continuum stands as one of his most wide-reaching legacies.

I have memories of Brian sharing stories of working with Tom in the early days of establishing the journal. Brian, in no uncertain terms, has credited Tom’s dedication and editorial work for the journal’s early success. Many other academics, such as Alec McHoul and Toby Miller, also played pivotal roles working with Tom in the journal’s early years. In Continuum’s 20th Volume, in 2006, Alec McHoul and Toby Miller both provide accounts of the formation of Continuum. As Alec has commented the journal was ‘very much an in-house project at Murdoch University’, successfully led by Tom (McHoul 2006, 7). In this Memorial Issue, former editor, Professor Mark Gibson fondly reflects on the Continuum of the Murdoch period, of around thirty years ago, whilst also examining the cultures of Cultural Studies Journals.

To me and from the many tributes and memories shared by others about Brian, he was an ideas man and got things done. Brian was the main organizer of the Perth Media Studies Conference in 1980. He invited notable international speakers, such as Ed Buscombe (UK), Manuel Alvarado (UK), Brian Henderson (US) and Marc Gervais (Canada) to present, and he received funding from Channel Nine Perth and Air India for the conference (Shoesmith 2009). Brian later succeeded in attaining funding from the AFI (Australian Film Institute), which initially provided the financial and technical support needed to run Continuum. Brian’s business savvy and tenacity to think big was admirable. In Tom’s own words, Brian ‘floated the idea’ of a journal’, and this concept developed from a Film and History conference in Perth, Western Australia in 1985 on which they worked together (cited in King and Williams 2015, 69). Brian was insistent that the journal had to have Continuum in the title (Shoesmith 2009). He was also insistent that Continuum was ‘identified as a Western Australian journal with a strong international following and a strong international flavour’. It should be noted that Perth, Western Australia has often been seen as marginal in the Australian experience. As Professor Lesley Stern, one of the early contributors to Continuum, who also recently passed away, writes ‘On the edge of Perth (linked by sprawling suburbia), it is also on the edge of the continent, facing towards the Indian Ocean rather than the rest of Australia’ (Stern and Ballantine 1993, 283). The Perth academic experience is that there is a degree of alienation from the rest of Australia (Miller 2015). Interestingly, not many senior Australian academics have shown a familiarity with Brian’s work. Much of Brian’s oeuvre did face towards the Indian Ocean. Aside from his work in Canada, his scholarly path and mentoring extended across Asia. The current editorial team have continued Brian’s mission for Continuum in that we have ensured that the special issues have increasingly attracted international authors and guest editors. An example of this is the special issue ‘A Queer Turn in Chinese-Language Entertainment Media’ (2020) edited by Jamie Zhao, University of Warwick and Alvin Wong, The University of Hong Kong. This follows Brian’s emphasis on an Asian thread and also his vision of an international scope.

From two issues per year, desktop published and self-distributed, Continuum has grown with the support of Taylor and Francis (for administration and distribution) to have a global readership and is a Q1 journal. In 2019–2020, two thirds of the full-text downloads were from outside the Australasian region, with the most from Europe, North America and then Asia. From the beginnings engendered by Brian and Tom, the journal’s overall download now exceeds one hundred and seventy thousand articles in a year. Interestingly, Australian authors still dominate the publication. In the last five years, article downloads for the journal have more than doubled. This shows a growing readership in keeping with the tradition of Continuum as a catalyst for emerging trends.

As highlighted earlier, Brian was adamant about the extreme value of Tom’s editorship of the journal in its earlier years. Tom was a highly respected scholar and mentor. In putting this issue together, there have been many academics who have reached out to acknowledge both Brian’s and Tom’s work. I am grateful for their input. I also thank the contributors who generously and thoughtfully shared their accounts of these two amazing academic leaders. It has become clear to me that there are remarkable parallels between Brian and Tom. They both looked for interesting academic angles, prized the personal voice, valued the views of others, and both are highly respected in their fields. Adrian Martin writes that,

Tom had not a sliver of cultural or academic snobbery in him, on any level. His approach to the world was founded on the idea that good, exciting, useful ideas can come from anybody and at any time – so you had better be open, ready and receptive (Martin 2021).

The same could be said about Brian. Lisa Bode also speaks of Tom’s openness to ideas, his valuable pedagogy and the importance of his scholarly endeavours. Similarly, Rachmah Ida discusses the importance of Brian’s influence. Tom’s scholarly work and its ongoing impact are further engaged within this issue by other leading scholars , such as Professor Toby Miller, Professor Graeme Turner, Professor Stuart Cunningham, Professor Meaghan Morris and Professor Keyan Tomeselli. They each provide a thoughtful, critically engaging discussion of Tom’s inspiring oeuvre. It is an honour to publish the work of these leading scholars in Continuum. They emphasize Tom’s influence on Australian media and cultural studies and cultural studies policy. Finally, it is a privilege to publish Tom’s last article ‘Re-Reading Personal Influence in an Age of Social Media’ edited by Ted Nannicelli and Nicholas Carah. Ted’s reflections about the final piece provide an insight into Tom’s important commitment to the field. It is an example of Tom’s dedication and drive, which was very much admired by many.

Tom had been working on this idea, teasing out the connections between the work of Paul Lazarsfeld and the strategies used by Facebook and other social media companies, for years. It started with a research project he and I worked on together and really came together in a subsequent research project he organised with Nic. Just two months before he passed away, he asked me to come visit him at home and, sick as he was, wanted to talk about nothing else except his plans for how to finish the paper. Shortly thereafter, he took a turn for the worse and sent Nic and me his draft for us to finish editing.

Tom and Brian’s work as scholars, mentors and eminent leaders is exemplary. Their work in establishing Continuum: The Journal of Media and Cultural Studies is a formidable legacy.

Panizza Allmark, Editor

A tribute from the CSAA

The passing of Brian Shoesmith and Tom O’Regan so close together last year came as a great shock to many members of the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia, and represents a keenly felt loss to the community. There is some consolation, however, in the way this sad coincidence further binds together their joint legacy as co-founders and long-time co-editors of Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies. The launching of Continuum played a pivotal role in the history of the CSAA in Australia, and it remains an important and highly regarded venue for CSAA members’ work. Selections from the annual CSAA conferences continue to appear as special issues of Continuum, typically as the last issue of the following year, and this now provides an important record of the changing face of CSAA scholarship in Australia across the years. Brian and Tom’s leadership in co-founding this journal, and their service in editing it between 1987 and 2006, is reflective of their generative and generous contributions to this community. It is also a manifestation of the spirit of collaboration and collective endeavour which drove their work, both together and individually, and which did so much to foster and sustain a strong sense of community amongst members of the CSAA. Their legacy of collective and collaborative work, which both men modelled and practised in their own professional lives, is one for which the CSAA will be forever grateful.

Elizabeth Stephens, President, Cultural Studies Association of Australasia. (CSAA)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Brian commenced working as a lecturer in Media Studies, at WA Secondary Teachers College, later to become the Western Australian College of Advanced Education (WACAE), in 1991 WACAE transformed to Edith Cowan University.

2. I also acknowledge the dedication and strong contribution of the book reviews editor Christina Lee and the photographic editor Talhy Stotzer.