Inside Backstory: Centering Community, Language, and Cultural Rhetorics in Undergraduate Research

The Program in Writing and Rhetoric is thrilled to celebrate the upcoming release of Volume 2 of Backstory, Stanford’s unique student-run, peer-reviewed undergraduate journal grounded in a cultural rhetorics framework. Born from a desire to expand what counts as academic knowledge, Backstory invites undergraduate researchers to place their languages, histories, communities, and lived experiences at the center of scholarly inquiry rather than at its margins.

PWR Lecturer Sangeeta Mediratta sat down with faculty advisors and PWR Lecturers Jennifer Johnson (JJ) and Lindsey Felt, along with their outstanding student editorial team of Mu Hsi Hsi, Sienna River Hoftetter, and Aniyah Xu Shen, to discuss the inspiration behind the journal, the rewards of building an authentic peer-review process, and what it means to expand the possibilities of undergraduate scholarship. The following conversation consists of questions submitted to the editors and responses provided in writing following discussions  that took place at various locations from the hallways of Hume to the gloom of Zoom. Some light dramatization may have snuck into the piece.

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Sangeeta Mediratta: Hello all! What an amazing gathering! I’m so excited and honored to speak to all of you! 

So, let’s get right into it: What was the initial spark for Backstory – was there a gap you saw in undergraduate research culture at Stanford that this journal was meant to fill? 

Lindsey Felt and Jennifer Johnson: While there are some discipline-specific undergraduate journals at Stanford, we saw an opportunity for a unique cultural rhetorics-focused journal that centers students’ communities, languages, and histories as an integral part of the research and writing process. In particular, PWR’s commitment to a cultural rhetorics framework, which highlights diverse linguistic, rhetorical and cultural practices in knowledge making, made us feel that an undergraduate journal within PWR was uniquely positioned to showcase some of the really strong work coming out of PWR and classes across Stanford, while also gradually opening that work to a broader undergraduate audience.

Sangeeta: Wow, that is so cool! It sounds like Backstory is doing a lot of rhetorical work as it is both subject and method. Tell us about how the name came about, and what does it signal about your pedagogical commitments?

JJ and Lindsey: As the journal was taking shape, the advisory board - Lindsey, JJ and Harriett Jernigan - met to brainstorm ideas for journal titles. We recognized the importance of a journal title that embodies the ethos of the journal and makes it legible to students and audiences. 

We wanted to invite work that places cultural rhetorics in conversation with technology and multimodality, so we needed an evocative title that could serve as a container for these ideas and practices. An early journal title recommended to us by Adam was “Cultures, Rhetorics and Technologies”; we also talked about “Code Switch,” but moved away from this term since it has become contested in linguistic literature. But a pattern that emerged from our early brainstorms was a single word title that could operate as both a verb and a subject, and had multiple connotations along the axes of technology, language, and making. 

"Backstory" emerged as the clear favorite for the way it nods to character and story development, which we felt connects powerfully to cultural rhetorics’ attention to how authors’ identities, languages and histories shape their writing and research. We also appreciated the active labor of “revealing” a backstory, and the various methods available to us to do this work such as autoethnography, community-oriented research, and of course, storytelling in its various modalities. Finally, we thought that when placed within a Cultural Rhetorics framework, backstory can become a model for explicitly centering stories, voices, and methods typically relegated to the margins in academic research. 

Sangeeta: A lot is in a name, after all! What did it mean to build a genuine peer-review process with student reviewers? What were the hardest parts to get right?

Lindsey and JJ: Building a peer-review process with a student editorial team has meant creating a student-led collaborative editorial model, one in which students are deeply involved in evaluating and shaping the work we publish. For each submission, we assign one instructor reviewer and one student reviewer, and then we come together to discuss the strengths of the piece, its fit with Backstory’s mission, and the kinds of revisions or feedback that might help develop it further. One of the most rewarding parts of the process has been watching students really take the lead in those conversations—thinking carefully about what makes a piece compelling, how to offer constructive feedback, and how to guide authors through multiple stages of revision and resubmission and then to copyediting. 

Since we’re only in our second issue, we’re still refining the process as we go. One of the biggest challenges is timing: submissions tend to arrive toward the end of the quarter, which is already an especially busy period for both authors and our editorial team. So part of the work has been figuring out how to balance the workload. What’s been really remarkable throughout all of this is the thoughtfulness our amazing student editors (Aniyah, Mu Hsi, and Sienna)  have brought to the process. 

Sangeeta (turning to Sienna): Tell us your thoughts about the process of reviewing and giving feedback on interdisciplinary writing.

Sienna Hofstetter: Since the purpose of the article is really to be inclusive of interdisciplinary pieces under one mission to illuminate backstories and unrepresented margins, we as editors approach each piece with curiosity and an open mind. These pieces generally bridge such niche topics, fields, and vocabularies, that our feedback generally seeks to clarify the author’s or subject’s positionality, strengthen the argumentative and narrative structure, and ensure that the piece is accessible to our audience. We hope that each author feels motivated and engaged through the editing process to refine work that we feel is important to share.

Sangeeta: From what I understand, Backstory centers two core questions about community, language, and counter-narrative. How did you arrive at those as the animating questions, and did they evolve through the process?

JJ and Lindsey: From the beginning, we were very intentional about grounding the journal in a cultural rhetorics framework and multimodal composing. A commitment to diverse “languaging” practices and to seeing students’ histories, communities, and lived experiences as valuable resources within the research and writing process has really been a driving motivation behind the journal. We wanted to build on the amazing student work already taking place in the Notation in Cultural Rhetorics that Harriett has cultivated through her incredible stewardship of NCR as Coordinator since its beginning. So in this way, Backstory reflects and extends commitments that already exist within PWR itself. The journal mirrors the broader mission that shapes the courses we teach and the work we do with students across PWR classes, while also giving those values a visible platform through undergraduate publication.

Sangeeta: I hear some of you  also published in the first issue (two PWR 2 RBAs) so please share your thoughts on what it means to share your work with broader audiences. Aniyah, were you one of them?

Aniyah Xu Shen: Yes, indeed! Being able to share my work with a broader audience means the work I’m doing feels like it can impact people beyond the Stanford PWR community. The culture of academic research is one that deprioritizes positionality; being able to challenge that and share my own lived experiences as meaningful, valid sources of knowledge has made me feel like I finally have a niche in the discourse where I don’t have to make myself smaller or cater to external expectations. I hope publishing work like this will help make academia more inclusive, intersectional, and interesting to all audiences, ultimately sparking change in how we think about the role of qualitative research and writing in society.

Sangeeta: Aniyah, how has participating in this project helped you grow as a writer, researcher, or communicator? Are there any skills or insights you've gained that you think will be useful beyond this experience?

Aniyah: It has made me a more curious and capable reader, writer, and communicator! Every submission we receive is so unique in its topic, style, research methodologies, and exigence. I am deeply aware of the fact that it is a privilege to read and assess these pieces. This role has made me more adept at assessing the rigor of original qualitative work and working with writers to solidify their authorial voices and intentions through the revision process. It’s also taught me valuable and adaptable copyediting skills, as well as how to speak about original research centering author positionality and experience with fellow editors, instructors, and both academic and general audiences.

Sangeeta: Wow…now those are some hefty transferable skills! 

 JJ and Lindsey, Now that Vol. 1 is out, what do you hope Vol. 2 looks like and what would it mean for this journal to have a lasting institutional life at Stanford?

Lindsey and JJ: Now that our second issue is just around the corner, we’re excited to continue building on the conversations that emerged in the first issue. Our first issue focused heavily on themes of language, identity formation, and belonging, and it was really meaningful to see the threads connecting the pieces—from code-switching, to neurodivergent nonverbal practices, to exploring the “Rez accent” across generations and understanding dialect discrimination in higher education. As we look ahead, we hope to continue expanding the range of voices represented in the journal while maintaining that same commitment to cultural rhetorics. The student editorial team has been spreading the word––expanding the visibility of Backstory across different departments and networks at Stanford. 

We’re also deeply grateful for the initial PWR research grant, awarded to the founding advisory team composed of Harriett, JJ, and Lindsey, which helped support our student editorial team with modest compensation for their thoughtful labor throughout the review process. We hope that support can continue, because the journal not only showcases the strong work emerging from PWR classes and beyond, but also gives students valuable experience participating in editorial and peer-review processes, thinking critically about revision and curation, and helping bring this work to a broader audience.

Aniyah: For future issues, we envision including work from undergraduate students beyond Stanford, perhaps starting with students from UC Berkeley and San Jose State University and then expanding to universities outside of the Bay. We are also exploring the idea of themed issues and plan to continue building the alt-text/experimental side of the journal.

Sangeeta: That sounds fabulous!

Thank you so much, all, for your time and for such an illuminating conversation! You are all doing such important work in nurturing and growing Backstory! I look forward to reading many future issues and I’m sure many of our colleagues and students do too!

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As Backstory enters its second volume, it continues to cultivate a space where undergraduate researchers can bring their full selves to their work. By centering language, community, history, and lived experience, the journal fosters conversations that are both academically rigorous and profoundly human, inviting readers to see research not just as the production of knowledge, but as a practice of connection.