Dr. Hannah Piercy

Hannah's teaching has included:

‘Rethinking Medieval Literature’ (BA and MA Lecture, FS25, co-taught with Prof. Dr. Annette Kern-Stähler)
‘Pain in Medieval Literature and Culture’ (BA Focus Module Seminar, HS24)
‘Medieval Women’s Literary Communities’ (BA Focus Module Seminar, FS24)
‘Beyond Words: Literary and Linguistic Perspectives on the Senses’, lecturer on BA Focus Module, contributing two lectures co-written and co-presented with Prof. Dr. Annette Kern-Stähler
‘Analysing Literature’ (BA Core Curriculum course, FS23)
‘Discovering a Medieval Manuscript: MS Ashmole 61’ (MA workshop, HS22)
‘Bodies in Medieval and Early Modern Romance’ (co-taught with Dr. Nicole Nyffenegger, HS22)
‘Seascapes and Sea-crossings in Old and Middle English Literature’ (Focus module seminar, co-taught with Dr. Will Brockbank, FS22)           
‘Convention and Subversion: Genre and Gender in Medieval Saints’ Lives’ (HS21)
‘Fairies and Otherworlds in Medieval Romance’ (FS21)

Hannah supervises BA and MA theses on relevant topics.                                 

Hannah previously taught ‘Romance and the Literature of Chivalry’ and ‘Introduction to Drama’ at Durham University.

Monographs:

Resistance to Love in Medieval English Romance: Negotiating Consent, Gender, and Desire, Studies in Medieval Romance, 25 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2023). Available Open Access: https://openaccess.boydellandbrewercms.com/publications/-265233/resistance-to-love-in-medieval-english-romance. Winner of the 2024 Book Prize of the Swiss Association of Medieval and Early Modern English Studies.

Hannah is currently working on a second monograph on sensory experience in Middle English literature.

Edited Volumes:

Reconsidering Consent and Coercion in Medieval Literature, ed. Jane Bonsall and Hannah Piercy, Gender and Sexuality in the Global Middle Ages 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2025). Available Open Access: https://www.brepolsonline.net/action/showBook?doi=10.1484%2FM.GMS-EB.5.132932.  

Consent: Legacies, Representations, and Frameworks for the Future, ed. Sophie Franklin, Hannah Piercy, Arya Thampuran, and Rebecca White (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023).

Journal Articles and Book Chapters:

‘Comparative Approaches to Men’s Experiences of Sexual Coercion: Reading across Multi-Text Manuscripts’, in Reconsidering Consent and Coercion: Power, Vulnerability, and Sexual Violence in Medieval Literature, ed. Jane Bonsall and Hannah Piercy, Gender and Sexuality in the Global Middle Ages 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2025), 111-27. Co-authored with Jane Bonsall.

‘Introduction: Why Reconsider Medieval Consent and Coercion? Why Now?’, in Reconsidering Consent and Coercion: Power, Vulnerability, and Sexual Violence in Medieval Literature, ed. Jane Bonsall and Hannah Piercy, Gender and Sexuality in the Global Middle Ages 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2025), 17-34. Co-authored with Jane Bonsall.

‘Medieval Race and the Senses: Sensing Race in Medieval Literature and Revisiting Richard Coer de Lyon’, in The Routledge History of the Senses, ed. Andrew Kettler and Will Tullett. Routledge, 2025. Co-authored with Annette Kern-Stähler.

‘Consent’, in The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Medieval Women’s Writing in the Global Middle Ages, ed. Elizabeth Herbert McAvoy, Michelle M. Sauer, and Diane Watt (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan 2024).

“‘aske bettyr, I counseyle the’: Requests, Conditions, and Consent in Malory’s ‘Sir Gareth of Orkney’”, Arthurian Literature, 39 (2024), 57-77.

‘Contact, Conduct, and Tactile Networks: Touch and its Social Functions in Middle English Verse Romance’, in Literature and the Senses, ed. Annette Kern-Stähler and Elizabeth Robertson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), 355-74. Available Open Access: https://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/academic/pdf/openaccess/9780192843777.pdf

‘Introduction’, in Consent: Legacies, Representations, and Frameworks for the Future, ed. Sophie Franklin, Hannah Piercy, Arya Thampuran, and Rebecca White, Interdisciplinary Research in Gender (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Available Open Access. Co-authored with Sophie Franklin, Arya Thampuran, and Rebecca White.

‘Afterword’, in Consent: Legacies, Representations, and Frameworks for the Future, ed. Sophie Franklin, Hannah Piercy, Arya Thampuran, and Rebecca White, Interdisciplinary Research in Gender (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Available Open Access. Co-authored with Sophie Franklin, Arya Thampuran, and Rebecca White.

‘Desire, Consent, and Misogyny in Post-medieval Adaptations of the Pelleas and Ettarde Story’, Journal of the International Arthurian Society, 10.1 (2022), 5-28.

‘The Ethics of Community in the Lai d’Haveloc’, Le Cygne: The Journal of the International Marie de France Society, 8 (2022), 53-71.

‘Binding and Unbinding: Fashioning Narrative in Medieval Romance’, Durham English Review, 4.1 (2016), 70-98.

Other:

Hannah has written numerous book reviews for journals including Medium Ævum and Nottingham Medieval Studies. She is happy to be contacted about opportunities to review books on medieval romance, consent, sensory studies, emotion, and medieval gender studies. She has also peer reviewed articles and book proposals for publication and is happy to be contacted with peer review requests for relevant material.

Hannah is a member of the following professional organisations:

• The Swiss Association of University Teachers of English (SAUTE)
• The Swiss Association of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (SAMEMES)
• The Berner Mittelalter Zentrum (BMZ)
• The Higher Education Academy (as Associate Fellow)
• The Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship
• The Early English Text Society
• The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature
• The International Marie de France Society
• The International Arthurian Society
• The New Chaucer Society
• Print Exchanges (a network for researchers of early print: https://printexchanges.org/)