Hannah Voss is a PhD candidate at Durham University, funded by a Durham Doctoral Studentship. Her thesis explores the representations of split identity, self-erasure, and alternative belonging in the work of mid-twentieth century women writers, especially H.D., Jean Rhys, and Anne Stevenson. She received her MA from Durham in 2019 and holds a BA (2018) from Benedictine College, in Atchison, Kansas. She currently serves as a postgraduate representative for the British Association for Modernist Studies, and has presented her work at New Work in Modernist Studies and published in The Modernist Review.
Hannah Voss
Contributions
Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land: Barbara Hepworth at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
In 1969, the sculptor Barbara Hepworth wrote to her ex-husband, Ben Nicholson, “so much depends, in sculpture, on what one wants to see through a hole!" What emerges in a sustained encounter with Hepworth’s work is her philosophy that sculpture is not simply a form carved or constructed out of specific material, but an intervention in a physical space, comprising the sculpture itself, the viewer, and the space surrounding it.
HERmione (1981) by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
H.D.’s HERmione opens with a meditation on the past, courtesy of her daughter, Perdita Schaffner. In H.D.-like prose, Schaffner reprimands herself: “Don’t delve and dredge. Cut down on nostalgia, that too can be insidious.”