Monet Lewis-Timmons has been selected as the new curator of literary and poetry collections at the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University. She will begin her role in July.
Monet Lewis-Timmons
Lewis-Timmons is currently an assistant professor of history at the University of Memphis, where she teaches African American history and museum studies. Her work spans archival research and processing, teaching with primary sources, donor relations, and the curation of digital and physical exhibits.
“We’re excited for her to join the team,” says Rose Library director Elizabeth Ott. “I am thrilled at the range that she has shown in what she’s able to bring to the role, and I’m excited for her to have the opportunity to come in and make her mark on the collections here at Rose Library.”
Depth of experience
An Emory alumna, Lewis-Timmons earned a bachelor’s degree in English and African American Studies in 2018. Her interest in archives began during her sophomore year, when a class visit to the Rose Library introduced her to Black women’s literary collections. “I thought, wow, this is so cool,” recalls Lewis-Timmons. “That was my first time in an archival collection, or even knowing the archives could be acquired and used for research purposes.”
Her scholarship focuses on 19th- and 20th-century African American literature, Black women’s writing and sexuality, archival practice, digitization, historical memory, and public humanities, with an emphasis on making archives related to Black life and culture accessible to broad audiences. She has conducted research on figures including Harlem Renaissance writer and activist Alice Dunbar-Nelson.
Lewis-Timmons has worked as a research assistant, research scholar, or graduate assistant at several institutions, including the University of Delaware, University of Heidelberg/ Princeton University, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture/Fisk University, and the University of Kansas. She was a project archivist at the Atlanta History Center and a Robert F. Smith Intern through the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Atlanta University Center’s Robert W. Woodruff Library.
Lewis-Timmons served in several positions in the Rose Library over the years after earning her bachelor’s degree, including as a public history research assistant, conducting archival research pertaining to Emory’s slavery initiative and collaborating with the University’s President’s Office on best practices in public memorials.
As a Rose Library intern, she helped process and create a finding aid for the papers of Black woman writer and poet J.J. Phillips. Known for her 1966 novel, “Mojo Hand,” Phillips was also an activist who dropped out of college to travel to North Carolina and take part in the student sit-in movement during the Civil Rights era. That internship gave Lewis-Timmons an indelible first experience with developing relationships with donors. She communicated often with Phillips, learning more about her during the collection processing.
“I was able to consult with [Phillips] on the finding aid about what type of information to include to make sure that she was accurately portrayed,” Lewis-Timmons recalls. “That showed me how important those conversations can be.”
In addition, Lewis-Timmons has published multiple articles and book chapters, including a chapter on Catherine “Miss Kitty” Boyd and Black commemoration practices in Oxford, Georgia, for the essay collection “Rhetoric, Public Memory, and Campus History,” edited by Rhondda Robinson Thomas (2022). As an NEH Public Humanities Fellow at Duke University, she sat on a panel for the film “Zora Head: The Life and Scholarship of Valerie Boyd,” part of the James Weldon Johnson Institute public dialogue series in October 2024 at Emory.
Lewis-Timmons holds a master’s degree in English and a museum studies certificate from the University of Delaware, as well as a PhD in English, where she was an African American Public Humanities Initiative Fellow.
“I’m also really excited to return to Emory in a different capacity, and with the new lens through this position,” says Lewis-Timmons. “I’ve been involved since graduating in all these different ways, but this feels right, and I feel like all of those other opportunities were leading to this moment. It feels like coming full circle.”
A new curator brings a new perspective
A great curator, Ott says, is someone who understands how archival materials are used by researchers. “That’s one of the really exciting qualities that Monet brings with her background as a scholar,” she says. “She has actually studied how archives come to be in libraries, how they get used, and what the wishes are of different creators when they place their papers in archives.”
Ott says she is looking forward to the fresh perspective that Lewis-Timmons will bring to the collections. The position has been vacant since the departure of Kevin Young in 2016, with staff members filling in on a temporary or interim basis since then.
“Anytime we have a new curator, they will bring their own expertise and vision for the position. Our literary and poetry archives are very prominent in the areas where we collect heavily, and I think we’re ready for someone to set some new directions and chart our new ambitions for the literary and poetry collections,” says Ott. “But I think more importantly, this position will benefit from Monet’s ability to bring a strategy and vision to those acquisitions.”
—by Maureen McGavin, senior writer, Emory Libraries
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Rose Library literary and poetry collections