James Lockhart

[John F. Schwaller]

The following announcement was sent out by the UCLA Department of History:

*From: *David Myers <myers at history.ucla.edu>
*Date: *January 22, 2014 1:58:11 PM PST


 Dear Friends,

I am saddened to pass on the news of the death of our distinguished
emeritus colleague, James Lockhart.  Jim was a member of the Department's
faculty from 1967 to 1994.

Kevin Terraciano, who studied with Jim Lockhart at UCLA, offers the
following words of tribute:

"Professor Emeritus James Lockhart passed away peacefully on January 17,
surrounded by his family, including his daughter and son, Elizabeth and
John, and his wife, Mary Ann.  Lockhart was one of the most original,
accomplished scholars in the field of early Latin American history.  He was
born in West Virginia, where he attended the state university in Morgantown.
He enrolled in the Army Language Institute and worked as a translator in
post-war Europe, especially in Germany.  His gift for learning languages
led him to consider graduate study in Comparative Literature, but he
decided to pursue a degree in History at the University of Wisconsin, where
he wrote his dissertation on Spanish Peru.  This was the basis of his first
book, a classic study of Peruvian society in the 16th century.  He taught
at Colgate and the University of Texas before he settled down at UCLA in
1972.  After writing two groundbreaking books on Peru, he began to shift
his attention to Mexico, while publishing a collection of letters from
sixteenth-century Spanish America with Enrique Otte, and a
state-of-the-field textbook titled *Early Latin America* with Stuart
Schwartz.  Lockhart went on to pioneer the translation and analysis of
archival Nahuatl-language texts from central Mexico, collaborating with
several scholars from diverse disciplines, and became one of the world's
leading experts on the Nahuatl language, as it was written in the Roman
alphabet from the mid-16th to the early 19th centuries.  He edited a
Nahuatl book series published by the UCLA Latin American Center and
published several more books on the topic with Stanford University Press. 
His
magnum opus, *The Nahuas After the Conquest *(1992), won multiple book
prizes from the American Historical Association.  He mentored dozens of
graduate students before he retired from UCLA early in his career, in 1995.
 After retirement he moved from Santa Monica to Pine Mountain, California,
where he continued to publish several books, to co-chair dissertation
committees, to help others publish books, and to work with scholars and
students around the world via the mail and internet--until the last few
weeks of his life.  He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, and in 2012 he received the XIV Banamex Prize for Mexican History
in Mexico City.

Jim, as he is known to us, was very fond of Renaissance music and enjoyed
playing the lute, vihuela, mandolin, recorder, and classical guitar with
family and friends.  He also found joy in woodworking and was good enough
at it to craft his own furniture and musical instruments.  He was an avid
sports fan.  He liked hiking in the mountains, and with Mary Ann became an
active member of the Sierra Club.  Most of all, he loved to teach students
who were eager to learn, and his genuine enthusiasm for knowledge and
generosity was contagious.  He will be missed, to say the least, but he and
his brilliant work will never be forgotten.  A memorial gathering and
conference in his honor are now in the planning."

May Jim's memory be a blessing to all those privileged to know him.

In sympathy,
David

-- 
Professor David N. Myers
Robert N. Burr Department Chair
UCLA History Department
405 Hilgard Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1473
(P) 310-825-1883
(F) 310-206-9630myers at history.ucla.eduwww.history.ucla.edu/myers



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