Tyechia Thompson is an Assistant Professor of English at Virginia Tech specializing in African American literature, digital humanities, and archival studies. Her work includes research and writing leading to a web-based publication analyzing the poetry and life of American poet James A. Emanuel.

James Andrew Emanuel (1921-2013) was a World War II veteran, a scholar of African American Literature, an international educator, an innovative poet, and an African American expatriate in Paris. Between 1994 and 1995, Emanuel sent to the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress (LOC) 4,000 items that would become the James A. Emanuel Papers; this collection now has over 5,400 items. The James A. Emanuel Project provides public access to 268 items from the Emanuel Papers at the LOC, highlighting Emanuel’s academic career, creative work, and strategies of remembrance and survival. The project accomplishes this through its six parts—Brief Biography, Mini Stories, Poetry Analyses, Poetry Readings, a Documentary, and Collections.