In memory of alumna, Hannah Kieta, 1994-2019

It is with great sadness that the Department announces that history alumna, Hannah Kieta, passed away last week, as the result of a traffic accident.

Hannah was described by Anthropology Professor Barry Lyons, as "a very sincere, bright and thoughtful person, the kind of student whose intellectual engagement helps to make teaching a rewarding and meaningful vocation."

Like many members of our community, Hannah loved History. While here at Wayne State, she was awarded the Presidential Scholarship and spent a year in study abroad in Munich, Germany, before graduating in 2018 with honors with a BA in History and German. Hannah was planning to earn a Master's degree in Library Science.

Hannah's father asked Professor Lyons to share information about her passing and her memorial service with others in the Wayne State family who may remember her.

The memorial service will be held in Livonia on Thursday evening at 7 p.m. at Peace Lutheran Church, 9415 Merriman Rd, Livonia.

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Recollections of Hannah

From Dr. Marsha Richmond

Hannah Kieta was an extraordinary student. I had her in the History capstone course I taught in Winter 2017, which used environmental history as its theme. Hannah decided to investigate the Detroit salt mine for her paper, and I worked closely with her over the semester as she began to explore the geological history of the Michigan Basin, the discovery of underground salt deposits in the late nineteenth century, and the commercial exploitation of this resource (including engineering practices) in the twentieth century. She struggled with attempting to provide a narrative structure to frame her historical data, but this, I learned, was a product of her continual striving for perfection in whatever she did. Her anguish, in the end, drove her to do justice to empirical details, configuring them into a careful interpretation of their "meaning." This tendency could sometimes be torturous for her, but it ultimately produced beautiful results. She was an excellent historian.

Hannah's capstone paper was very good-I nominated it for an award--but she was not satisfied. She asked me whether I would supervise her Honors thesis, in which she wanted to expand the focus on Detroit to place this case study into a broader context that would investigate the regional history of salt and its importance. She believed, quite rightly, that the exploitation of this natural resource had not received sufficient historical attention, having been overlooked in favor of more dramatic "industrial" histories involving our region's manufacturing past, despite salt's fundamental importance as a basic human commodity and indeed a biological necessity.

Thus, Hannah immersed herself in a detailed study of the Goderich, Ontario, salt mine on the shores of Lake Huron, which is the largest underground salt mine in the world. She worked assiduously to uncover all available primary sources, driving to Goderich a couple of summers ago to carry out research in the archives there.

She also examined an extensive collection of secondary sources, expanding her coverage even to include the salt deposits and important industrial development of upstate New York-again, an understudied topic, but one that led her to consider the importance of salt in the rise of the early North American chemical industry (think Dow as well as DuPont). Although again Hannah struggled to "control" this "beast" of a topic, even having to extend her time at Wayne State in order to accommodate her continual striving for perfection (but worrying about how she might be impacting her parents and siblings), she produced an outstanding final product. Indeed, I suggested that she try to publish her paper, which was something she pursued after graduating from WSU.

Last summer I wrote recommendations for Hannah as she sought to parlay her History degree and fluency in German into a summer job. I was very happy to learn that she was hired by the Ann Arbor Public Library. Although I encouraged her to pursue a Ph.D. in history, she thought combining her love of history with a degree in library science and archival administration better suited to her aspirations. I learned from her obituary that she was about to begin a master's program this fall.

Hannah was an extraordinary student, but she was also a very special individual who thought deeply about all aspects of her life and her position in the world. We are all very much poorer for her tragic loss.

I appreciate the value that Hannah's presence added to WSU and to me and the other instructors and students in classes she enriched with her insightful intellect. As Barry Lyons (Anthropology) so eloquently expressed, Hannah was "the kind of student whose intellectual engagement helps to make teaching a rewarding and meaningful vocation."

Marsha Richmond, professor, history of science

From Dr. Liette Gidlow

I was honored to have Hannah as a student in my classes at Wayne State. She had such a love of learning and desire to excel, and she helped lead all of us in the classroom to deeper understandings of the subjects we were studying together. She and I had many conversations in office hours and I truly enjoyed every exchange. I have conveyed my condolences to her family. Hannah truly made Wayne State a better place.

Liette Gidlow, associate professor, history of 20th century U.S. politics, women, and gender