Staff Listing

As the Writing Coordinator, I assist with the facilitation of the tutoring program, including scheduling, social media, and tutor mentorship. I also deliver several online workshops to help develop undergraduate students' skills as they begin their journeys into university-level writing. If you're looking to make an appointment with me, I can tutor both undergraduate and master's level students. Though my expertise is in the Arts, I have experience tutoring students from all faculties at Laurier and particularly enjoy working with students in Education and Business.

I completed my undergraduate degree in film studies and history in 2019 and my OGS funded Master's of English in 2020, both at Laurier. After getting involved with Laurier Writing Services through the Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts (LUJA), I joined the team as a peer tutor in 2018. While holding my position as a graduate writing tutor, I enjoyed working in an additional capacity as a Laurier International tutor, where I worked closely with many English language learners and intercultural communicators. After finishing my Master’s of English, I joined Writing Services as the Writing Coordinator in a full-time capacity.

As a writing consultant, I work with faculty as well as undergraduate and graduate students to design and deliver university-wide writing support. I collaborate with faculty to design discipline-specific writing assignments, and I deliver in-class writing workshops. I have disciplinary expertise in writing in Business, Economic, Science, and Social Work. I enjoy consulting with graduate and undergraduate students during 50-minute individual appointments, guiding students to become more proficient and confident writers. I also deliver scholarship writing workshops for graduate students. With James Southworth, I co-lead the tutor training program, hiring, training, supervising, and mentoring the Writing Services' team of undergraduate and graduate writing tutors.

Before beginning my role as a writing consultant, I was Assistant Professor of Academic Writing in Laurier's Faculty of Arts. I completed my Ph.D. in English and Film Studies at Laurier in 2014, and held a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard, where I did research in the history of women's writing and British Romanticism. I am an experienced post-secondary educator who has taught writing and literary studies at all levels. For over a decade, I also worked at writing centres at Laurier and the University Alberta in teaching and research roles.

Sharpe, A. In press. Five entries on novels by Mary Charlton and Thomas Clio Rickman. The Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, 1660-1820. Ed. April London. Cambridge University Press.

Ty, E. and Sharpe, A. (2017). “Mary Hays and the Didactic Novel in the 1790s.” Didactic Novels and British Women’s Writing, 1790-1820. Ed. Hilary Havens. Routledge. pp. 90-105.

Sharpe, A. (2014). “Margaret Hale’s Books and Flowers: North and South’s Paratextual Dialogues with Felicia Hemans.” Victorian Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Victorian Studies, vol. 40, no.1, pp. 197-209.

Sharpe, A. (2013). “The Case of the Wandering Uterus: Coma, the Medical Thriller and the Woman Doctor-Detective.” Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 220-38.

Sharpe, A. (2012). “Orphan, Embroiderer, Insect, Queen: The ‘Elegant and Ingenious’ Art of Being Ellena in Radcliffe’s The Italian (1796).” European Romantic Review, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 123-40.

As a writing consultant, I work with faculty to develop discipline-specific writing assignments and in-class writing workshops.

I also work with graduate students to assist them with their learning of discipline-specific writing conventions. During one-hour appointments, I provide feedback about the strengths and areas for improvement of each student's writing.

I also co-lead the writing tutoring program. This involves recruiting, hiring, training, supervising, and mentoring a team of exceptional undergraduate and graduate student tutors.

Finally, I conduct academic research, which primarily focuses on the interconnection between critical thinking and writing studies.

I began as a writing consultant at the Laurier Writing Centre in June of 2015. I completed my PhD at the University of Western Ontario in 2014 with an expertise in moral psychology and ethics. While at Western, I taught courses in the Philosophy department and was an instructor for the Teaching Assistant Training Program at the Teaching Support Centre. In 2019, I completed the TESOL certification (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) at Renison College, University of Waterloo.

Peer-reviewed journal articles

Southworth, J. (2020). How argumentative writing stifles open-mindedness. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022220903426

Chaktsiris, M. & Southworth, J. (2019). Thinking beyond writing development in peer review. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 10(1), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.5206/cjsotl-rcacea.2019.1.8005

Southworth, J. (2016). The passional nature and the will to believe. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy, 52(1), 62-78. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/625131

Popular

Southworth, J (2020). The problem with argumentative writing. University Affairs. https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/the-problem-with-argumentative-writing/

Southworth, J (2018). The value of the op-ed as a writing assignment. University Affairs. https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/value-op-ed/

PhD Dissertation

Southworth, J. (2014). William James' theory of emotion. Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. Paper 2315. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/2315

Commentary

Southworth, J. (2013). Can morally disvalued traits constitute the symptoms of a mental disorder. Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology, 20(3), 221-223. doi:10.1353/ppp.2013.0040

Book Chapter

Southworth, J. (2012). Capabilities and the environment frontier. Hawa, B., & Weidtmann, N. (eds.), The Capability Approach on Social Order, LIT Verlag, Münster, 380-385.