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

Academic

I am a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Wolverhampton.

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

  • 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, date TBC).

Creative Publications and Plays

  • 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).