Ann Margaret Wightman, a leading historian of Colonial Latin America, died on March 11, 2021, in Middletown, Connecticut. She was 70 years old and had retired in 2015 after a distinguished 36-year teaching career at Wesleyan University in Middletown. Ann is fondly remembered by her students for being a dedicated, demanding, and charismatic teacher who was one of the first winners of the Binswanger Prize for excellence in teaching at Wesleyan in 1996. She was also a paragon of responsible leadership at Wesleyan and in the wider profession. Ann is survived by her husband, Mal Bochner.
Ann was born in South Euclid, Ohio (suburban Cleveland), and became a first-generation college graduate. In 1968, she won a National Merit Scholarship to support her undergraduate studies at Duke University. While at Duke, she took classes with John TePaske, who encouraged her to pursue her interest in Latin American history in graduate school. In the years following her graduation from Duke, John continued to offer advice, encouragement, support, and friendship, particularly in the early years of her career when she valued it most.
Ann received her BA from Duke in 1972, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude. She then entered the graduate program in Colonial Latin American History at Yale University, where she took classes with Richard Morse (later her dissertation adviser) along with Ursula Lamb, Karen Spalding, and Emilia Viotti da Costa. While at Yale, she met a fellow graduate student in Latin American history, Mal Bochner, who would become her husband; it was a long, close, and very happy marriage.
Ann obtained her M.Phil. at Yale in 1976, and then a Henry L. and Grace Doherty Fellowship for 1976 (followed by a Social Science Research Council Fellowship for 1976-78) to conduct dissertation research in Peru.
I met Ann and Mal in Lima in 1976 through Kendall Brown, my friend and fellow graduate student at Duke. It was a tense time in Lima; Peru was then under the control of an inefficient but paranoid military government that imposed a strict nighttime curfew throughout the city. The police and military were omnipresent in the capital. John TePaske, my dissertation adviser and Ann's undergraduate mentor, had asked her to look out for Kendall Brown and me upon our arrival in the city. Ann and Mal welcomed us warmly and gave good advice about how to live and do doctoral research in Lima. I have fond memories of the time spent with them, both before and after Kendall went south to do his research in Arequipa. When we had all returned to the United States, we kept in touch, meeting periodically at conferences and other academic events.
Ann's long and distinguished scholarly career blossomed after she completed her doctorate at Yale in 1983. She began teaching at Wesleyan in 1979 as an instructor and then moved up through the ranks in her department, receiving tenure in 1988 and the promotion to Professor in 1994. In 1990, Ann published the pathbreaking revision of her doctoral dissertation Indigenous Migration and Social Change: The Forasteros of Cuzco, 1570–1720 with Duke University Press. The book demonstrates through the lives of migrants (forasteros) the ways that Spanish colonialism altered community structures, changed indigenous economic and social patterns, and exacerbated the conflict between Andean religion and Catholicism. It was one of the first studies to focus so directly on indigenous migration patterns as a strategy for the Andean peoples to survive and resist Spanish rule, and several later scholars followed her lead. The book received the Herbert E. Bolton Prize in 1991 for the best English-language book on Latin American history, a rare accomplishment for a junior scholar publishing her first book.
Ann received a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Award for 1992–93 for a second book-length study of the transformation of indigenous kin formations under Spanish rule. She also served on several committees for the Conference on Latin American History and the Latin American Studies Association, and as a manuscript reviewer for numerous journals and university presses. Then and later, Ann was a role model and advocate for younger scholars, particularly women, in the profession.
Ann devoted her entire career to Wesleyan University. She was a popular, charismatic, and award-winning teacher who demanded the very best from her students, because she believed in their potential. As one student remarked: “I am thankful for her tenacity, honesty, and integrity. And mostly because of her belief in my abilities, and for her expectation of excellence, regardless of circumstance.” Another recent graduate wrote: “She is a truly gifted teacher, mentor, and academic, with a sharp mind and a big heart.”
In addition to her skill as a teacher, Ann was a model citizen at Wesleyan. She was a major force in developing the Center for the Americas, which brought American and Latin American Studies together in one program, serving as its director from 1999 to 2001 and again from 2003 to 2005. She also chaired the Latin American Studies program multiple times, and she was an active member of the advisory committee of the academic council. In addition, she served on numerous other university committees, including as an elected representative of the Wesleyan Presidential Search Committee in 1987–88.
Ann was a mentor to several generations of Wesleyan students during her 36-year tenure at the institution. Gabriel Paquette, a former student assembly president at Wesleyan, and now the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Professor of History at the University of Oregon, perhaps summed up her career best in a recent note to me, when he said Ann was “a good example of how someone committed to egalitarianism can put those ideals into practice in everyday life” with “just the right balance of gravitas and humor. She was revered by her colleagues, even those with very different ideological orientations. I miss her greatly.”
To help first-generation college students at Wesleyan, Ann worked to establish a special scholarship, later named the Professor Ann Wightman Scholarship for First-Generation Students at Wesleyan. As one of the students who enthusiastically endorsed the idea for the scholarship, Miguel Guadalupe (class of 1998) stated: “She knew what it was like to shoulder the burden of high expectations from our family and communities, while facing the realities and obstacles of college life on our own.”
When a senior colleague in the History Department mentioned that he was looking forward to writing Ann's memorial, she decided to act on the idea and write her own tribute, which was read by a colleague at her memorial service. The service was held on Zoom, and the sentiments expressed are pure Ann:
• “Say that I was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the grateful descendant of courageous immigrants from Scotland and Italy.”
• “Say that I flourished in the public schools, and got a superb undergraduate education at Duke before its senior professors established their PhD programs.”
• “Say that I survived graduate school at Yale.”
• “Say that I came up Route 17 to teach one course as a visiting instructor and stayed because I remained committed to what I thought Wesleyan could and should be, even after the institution itself lost those commitments.”
• “Say that I found a second home in the Andes and that I sought to capture the history of that region in my first book, which won the top prize in my field but always loomed over my other work.”
• “Say that I was happiest in the classroom and that I tolerated the frequent committee and administrative duties that allowed me to argue for principles and policies I believed in, especially the regulations concerning adjunct professors.”
• “Say that I gladly helped build Latin American Studies and the Center for the Americas.”
• “Say that I respected many colleagues, that I honored and valued my friends, and that I uncritically adored their children.”
• “Say that I cherished my extended families in Cuzco and in Cleveland.”
• “Above all, say that I loved Mal.”
For her students and for her colleagues in Latin American Studies in the United States and abroad, Ann was a kind, supportive, and supremely intelligent member of the academy. Although she was taken from us too soon, Ann and Mal lived a full, happy, and productive life. Like Gabriel Paquette, those of us who knew her as a colleague and friend will miss her greatly.
