AAPI Heritage Month is in full swing, and three TCNJ students gave it something worth celebrating before it even began.
Bryanna Carrie ’26, Bryce Maher ’27, and Gabriella Rees ’26 traveled to Naperville, Illinois, in late March to present original research at the 33rd annual ASIANetwork Conference. The annual gathering brought together scholars, educators, and practitioners from more than 100 institutions dedicated to advancing Asian, Asian diasporic, and Asian American studies in liberal arts education. Their work was among 51 student posters showcased at the conference, and the response they received showed that TCNJ is becoming a familiar name within the ASIANetwork community.
All three students are members of TCNJ’s AAPI Advocacy Group and were mentored by Yifeng Hu, professor of communication, journalism, and film. Their projects grew out of Hu’s courses on AAPI representation and media. Carrie dug into the satirical series Interior Chinatown and what it reveals about Hollywood’s long history of typecasting Asian Americans. Maher looked at how documentary film can push back against Asian stereotypes in entertainment and athletics. Rees used four documentaries to explore the complicated, often-overlooked history of Black-Asian relations in the United States.
For Hu, the thread running through all of it is the same. “It’s about making the invisible visible — fighting for the right representation, because there are so many stereotypes and wrong representations,” she said. Helping her students bring that work to a national stage is, for Hu, where the real reward lives.
ASIANetwork Executive Director Dan Choffnes took notice, praising the depth and passion TCNJ’s students brought to their work. He noted that Hu has “combined scholarship, advocacy, and community engagement in a powerful way,” adding that other colleges are taking notice and following her lead.
The conference’s standout moment came when Carrie took home the Student Video Challenge Award for Beyond the Screen, her short documentary capturing TCNJ’s Asian American Film Festival. The video project also earned her the 2025 Andy Polansky Fellowship Award, with Hu recognized as her mentor at the ceremony.
“It was a goal that Professor Hu and I had been working towards for over a year,” said Carrie. “We worked tirelessly for months, down to the very last minute. Knowing other people recognized our efforts and passion made it worth all the stress and late nights.”
Maher said talking about his research with members of the AAPI community added something no classroom could. “I really enjoyed getting to hear how my research related to real-life experiences,” he said. “It was very enlightening, and I’m grateful I had the chance to present.”
Rees put it simply: “This changed my perception of my work and what I was capable of creating as an undergraduate student. I will treasure the experience for a lifetime.”
Hu, who secured funding so all three students could attend without financial burden, is making the ASIANetwork Conference an annual tradition, with this year marking her second consecutive cohort. It’s an extension of the broader AAPI advocacy work she launched on campus in 2022 in response to the Atlanta spa shootings and a surge in anti-Asian hate incidents during the pandemic, a movement that has grown every semester since, drawing students of all backgrounds into the cause.
She’s already thinking about next year’s conference in Seattle and about the students who will take up the opportunity to continue bringing AAPI stories to wider audiences. “When you see a student grow from where they were in the beginning to where they land right before they leave campus,” she said, “you just have the natural urge to help them get there. And when they do, you smile.”
— Michelle Rivera