Daisy Black
Medievalist, storymaker, theatre director, folk dance teacher, BBC / AHRC New Generation Thinker
Daisy Black

Academic and Broadcasting

I am a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Wolverhampton and am one of the BBC / AHRC’s New Generation Thinkers.

I specialise in medieval religious drama, with a particular interest in time and gender. Recent works include articles on the hortus conclusus in Cornish religious drama and on the nails used to crucify Christ in the York ‘Crucifixion’ pageant and domestic arguments between Mary and Joseph in the N-Town plays.

My other research interests include periodization and memory; medieval depictions of Jews and Saracens; narratives of cannibalism and their relation to the Eucharist; medievalism in modern board game culture; examining dramatic performance as a means of reassessing lay theologies during the early Reformation and women’s performance in medieval and early modern Europe.

I can be contacted about all matters academic via my faculty webpage.

Academic Publications

Books

Black, Daisy, Play time: Gender, anti-Semitism and temporality in medieval biblical drama (Manchester University Press, 2020).

Articles

  • Black, Daisy, ‘The Time of the Tree: Returning to Eden after the Fall in the Cornish Creation of the World’, Medieval Feminist Forum, 50.1 (2014), 61-89.
  • Black, Daisy, ‘A Man Out of Time: Joseph, Time and Space in the Marian Plays of the N-Town Manuscript’, in Gender, Time and Memory, ed. by Liz Herbert McAvoy, Liz Cox and Roberta Magnani (D. S. Brewer, May 2015), pp. 147-162.
  • Black, Daisy, ‘‘Nayles Large and Lang’: Masculine Identity and the Anachronic Object in the York Crucifixion Play’, Medieval Feminist Forum, 50.2 (2015), 85-104.
  • Black, Daisy, ‘Late Medieval: Excluding Chaucer (Drama Section)’, The Year’s Work in English Studies, 94.2 (2016), 68-73.
  • Black, Daisy, ‘Dressing the Pleasure Garden: Creation, Recreation and Varieties of Pleasure in the two texts of the Norwich Grocers’ Play’, in The Medieval and Early Modern Garden in Britain: Enclosure and Transformation, 1200-1750, ed. by Patricia Skinner and Theresa Tyers (Routledge, 2018).
  • Black, Daisy, ‘Commanding Un-Empty Space: Silence, Stillness and Scopic Authority in the York Christ Before Herod’ in Gender: Places, Spaces and Thresholds, ed. by Victoria Blud, Diane Heath and Einat Klafter (London: IHR, 2019).
  • Black, Daisy, ‘Theatre and Performance’ in The Routledge History of Women in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Amanda Capern (Routledge, 2019).

Broadcasts

3rd March 2020: Appeared on BBC Radio 3’s ‘Free thinking’ and ‘Arts and Ideas’, discussing early female actors and gossip with Anne Enright, Emily Butterworth and Marie Le Conte. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fwfb

29th December 2019: Radio 3’s ‘Sunday Feature’ documentary, ‘Glitter and Villainy’: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000cp1h

21st December 2019:  Guest storyteller on BBC Radio Sheffield’s Kat Cowan Christmas show.  Telling dark tales and discussing Sheffield carols.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07wf5c6

14th October 2019: Guest appearance as academic and storyteller on BBC Radio Sheffield’s ‘The Monday Night
Social’. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07n3rcq

2nd April 2019:        BBC Radio 3’s The Essay: ‘Cooking and Eating God in Medieval Drama’.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003tjb

29th March 2019:   Guest on BBC Radio 3’s ‘In Tune’. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003rsh

23rd October 2019: Guest and exhibiton reviewer on BBC Radio 3’s ‘Free Thinking’.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003rsh

23rd May 2018:        Guest on BBC Radio 3’s ‘Free Thinking’ talking about Noah’s Wife and motherhood.  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b3fjvg

10th March 2018:     Live panel at the BBC’s Free Thinking Festival, Gateshead. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09xjk48

21st February 2015: Guest on North Manchester FM (106.6 FM) programme Hannah’s Bookshelf (see https://www.mixcloud.com/Hannahs_Bookshelf/).

Creative Publications and Plays

  • Story: ‘Four Blank Pages’ in Nothing, ed. by Hannah Kate (Manchester: Hic Dragones, 2019), pp. 7-22.
  • Article: ‘Passion for Dance’ in Magnet Magazine, issue 112 (Spring 2017) (Commission).
  • Play: The Alchemist’s Daughter (Performed at the Royal College of Physicians, 10th March 2016).
  • Play: Bayeux Tapestry: The Stitches Speak (Performed at the 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, 2015).
  • Story: ‘Shifting Sands’, in Hauntings, ed. by Hannah Kate (Manchester: Hic Dragones, 2014), pp. 319-338.
  • Story: ‘The Carrier’, in Impossible Spaces, ed. by Hannah Kate (Manchester: Hic Dragones, 2013), pp. 11-22.
  • Story: ‘A Study of a Life in Six Umbrellas’, Uroborus Journal (2012), 22-24.
  • Poem: ‘On a Painting by Degas’, in Mays 14, ed. by Don Paterson and Jeanette Winterson (2006).