IMC 2026: Sessions

Session 320: New Voices in Medieval Drama: Staging Time

Monday 6 July 2026, 16:30-18:00

Sponsor:	Medieval & Renaissance Drama Society
Organiser:	Daisy Black, School of Social Science, Humanities & Creative Industries, University of Wolverhampton
Moderator/Chair:	Cora Dietl, Institut für Germanistik, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen
Respondent:	Daisy Black, School of Social Science, Humanities & Creative Industries, University of Wolverhampton
Paper 320-a	Playing with Fire: The Loss of England's Earliest Recorded Miracle Play (Language: English) Isabelle Lepore-Thompson, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, Open University Index terms: Historiography - Medieval, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Performance Arts - Drama, Performance Arts - General
Paper 320-b	Faustus and the Split Self: Time, Duality, and Heidegger's Always-Already Subject (Language: English) Caitlyn Salinas, Department of English, Texas A&M University, College Station Index terms: Performance Arts - Drama, Performance Arts - General, Theology
Paper 320-c	T4T Dynamics and Queer Temporality in Late Medieval Drama (Language: English) Oliver Wilkin, Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences, Swansea University / Prifysgol Abertawe Index terms: Gender Studies, Language and Literature - Middle English, Performance Arts - Drama, Sexuality
Paper 320-d	Backbiter as Trickster in The Castle of Perseverance (Language: English) Gabrielle Middleton, School of Science & Humanities, University of Wolverhampton Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Performance Arts - Drama, Rhetoric, Theology
Abstract	MRDS continues its annual tradition of presenting exciting new work from early career scholars and postgraduates working in early drama studies. This panel’s papers explore the multivalent ways in which early drama can be used as a medium to explore questions of medieval time and polychromatic complexity. This includes the ability of plays to ‘cross’ between different moments in time; queer temporal unorthodoxy created by the plays’ disruptions to heteronormative and biblical timelines; staging tensions between divine foreknowledge and individual characterisation; the temporal slippage caused by dramatic archetypes; and the historical challenges for early drama researchers working with incomplete and missing performance records and texts. The panel will include commentary from a respondent alongside the papers.