I am a specialist in medieval performance and modern storytelling. I completed my PhD in medieval religious drama at the University of Manchester, and have since published on gender, space and authority in medieval drama; set dressing and the senses; women in medieval and early modern performance; medievalism in modern board gaming; Shakespeare’s medieval borrowings; and performance storytelling using modern materials. My first monograph, Play Time: Gender, Anti-Semitism and Temporality in Medieval Biblical Drama, came out with Manchester University Press in 2020. My next academic book looks at food on the medieval stage, and I am currently writing a trade book of feminist adaptations of medieval stories.
From 2017 to 2026 I worked as a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Wolverhampton, and before that held teaching posts at the Universities of Hull and Manchester.
- Monograph: Black, Daisy, Play Time: Gender, anti-Semitism and temporality in medieval biblical drama (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020).
- Black, Daisy, ‘Shroud, Girdle, Swaddling, Feather: Yde and Olive and Performance Storytelling as Medievalist Feminist Praxis’, Public Humanities special edition ‘Creating the Medieval Now’ (2026).
- Black, Daisy, ‘Meeting and parting company with Mandeville, or, how Alexander the Great became ‘the world’s most annoying gap year student’, in Sarah Salih and Tom White, ed., Mandeville’s Travels: Race, Religion, Reception (London: Boydell and Brewer, 2026), 173-190.
- Black, Daisy, and Jane Bonsall, ‘Adapting and Performing The Seven Sages of Scotland’, Open Library of Humanities Journal, 2025.
- Black, Daisy, ‘Lesbians, Drag Kings, and Pregnant Queens: The Digby Mary Magdalene’s Queer Relationships’, Early Theatre 27.2 (2024), 51–86.
- Editor, Introduction, Chapter: Black, Daisy, ‘Promising a Storm: Anticipation, Spectacle and the Ship in the Digby Mary Magdalen and Shakespeare’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre’ in Medieval Afterlives: Transforming Traditions in Shakespeare and early English drama, ed. by Daisy Black and Katherine Goodland (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2024).
- Editor, Introduction and Article: ‘Being the Bigger Ram: Arable vs Pastoral Masculinities in the Towneley Mactacio Abel’, Medieval Feminist Forum, ed. by Daisy Black and Linda Mitchell, 58.1 (2022), 84-105 (Introduction, pp. 10-140)
- Black, Daisy, ‘Absent Mothers: The Feminized ‘Dark Ages’ in Modern Card Game Cultures’, in The Middle Ages in Modern Culture: History and Authenticity in Contemporary Medievalism, ed. by Robert Houghton and Karl Alvested (I.B. Tauris, 2021).
- Black, Daisy, ‘Theatre and Performance’ in The Routledge History of Women in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Amanda Capern (Routledge, 2019).
- 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), pp. 237-250.
- 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 (New York: Routledge, 2018), pp. 102-122.
- 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, ‘A Man Out of Time: Joseph, Time and Space in the Marian Plays of the N-Town Manuscript’, in Reconsidering Gender, Time and Memory in Medieval Culture, ed. by Liz Herbert McAvoy, Liz Cox and Roberta Magnani (D. S. Brewer, May 2015), pp. 147-162.
- 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.
Publications (accepted, forthcoming)
- Black, Daisy, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry: New Yarns’, in Une fresque brodée en l’honneur de Shirley Ann Brown. La Tapisserie de Bayeux vue par ses collègues et amis / A collaborative tapestry in honour of Shirley Ann Brown : the Bayeux Tapestry seen by her colleagues and friends, ed by Gale Owen-Crocker and Sylvette Lemagnen (Brepols, 2026).
- Black, Daisy, ‘Why does Herod swear by the prophet Mohammed?’: Teaching race in the medieval drama classroom’, in Approaches to Teaching Medieval English Drama, ed. by John T. Sebastian and Emma Lipton (Modern Language Association, 2026).
- Black, Daisy, ‘Diverse women said diverse things… A medieval storyteller’s account of research, performance, and the feminist shipping of Chaucer’s heroines’, in Performing Medievalism: Tricks, Tips and Tropes from Early Artistic Practice for the Modern-Day Performer, ed. by Ollie Jones and Eleanor Chadwick (Bloomsbury, 2027).
- Black, Daisy, ‘The governor, the wife and the cock-blocking constable: Spatial policing and heterosexual parody in the York pageant The Dream of Pilate’s Wife’, in Queer Textures of the Past (5th to 16th Centuries), ed. by David Carrillo-Rangel and Kate Maxwell (Medieval Institute Publications, 2027).
- Black, Daisy, ‘Mrs Noah and the Selkies: Submerged objections and occupying banned spaces in medieval drama and modern open water swimming culture’, Green Ink special edition (early 2027).