Matthew Hayes – författare

Beginning in the 1950s, alleged sightings of unidentified flying objects in Canadian skies bred tension between the state and its citizens. While the public demanded to know more about the phenomenon, government officials appeared unconcerned and unresponsive. Suspicion of government deepened among certain sectors of Canadian society in the decades that followed, leading to demands for greater public transparency and a new kind of citizen activism.In Search for the Unknown Matthew Hayes uncovers the history of the Canadian government’s investigations into reports of UFOs, revealing how these reports were handled, deflected, and defended from 1950 to the 1990s. During this period Canadians filed more than 5,000 reports of UFO sightings – many with striking descriptions and illustrations – with branches of government and law enforcement. Although the government conducted some exploratory studies, officials were unable to solve the mystery of UFOs or provide satisfactory answers about their alleged existence, and they soon declared the matter closed. Dissatisfied citizens responded by taking matters into their own hands, starting UFO clubs and civilian investigation groups, and accusing the government of a cover-up. A mutual mistrust developed between citizens who were suspicious of their government and officials who dismissed their fears and anxieties. This provided fertile ground for anti-authoritarian attitudes and the cultivation of conspiracy theories.In an era of political division, and amid heightened awareness of states’ responsibilities for their citizens, Search for the Unknown reveals the challenges that governments face in responding to public anxieties and preserving trust in public institutions.

A telling look at today’s “reverse” migration of white, middle-class expats from north to south, through the lens of one South American cityEven as the “migration crisis” from the Global South to the Global North rages on, another, lower-key and yet important migration has been gathering pace in recent years-that of mostly white, middle-class people moving in the opposite direction. Gringolandia is that rare book to consider this phenomenon in all its complexity.Matthew Hayes focuses on North Americans relocating to Cuenca, Ecuador, the country’s third-largest city and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Many began relocating there after the 2008 economic crisis. Most are self-professed “economic refugees” who sought offshore retirement, affordable medical care, and/or a lower–cost location. Others, however, sought adventure marked by relocation to an unfamiliar cultural environment and to experience personal growth through travel, illustrative of contemporary cultures of aging. These life projects are often motivated by a desire to escape economic and political conditions in North America. Regardless of their individual motivations, Hayes argues, such North–South migrants remain embedded in unequal and unfair global social relations. He explores the repercussions on the host country-from rising prices for land and rent to the reproduction of colonial patterns of domination and subordination. In Ecuador, heritage preservation and tourism development reflect the interests and culture of European-descendent landowning elites, who have most to benefit from the new North–South migration. In the process, they participate in transnational gentrification that marginalizes popular traditions and nonwhite mestizo and indigenous informal workers. The contrast between the migration experiences of North Americans in Ecuador and those of Ecuadorians or others from such regions of the Global South in North America and Europe demonstrates that, in fact, what we face is not so much a global “migration crisis” but a crisis of global social justice.

A telling look at today’s “reverse” migration of white, middle-class expats from north to south, through the lens of one South American cityEven as the “migration crisis” from the Global South to the Global North rages on, another, lower-key and yet important migration has been gathering pace in recent years-that of mostly white, middle-class people moving in the opposite direction. Gringolandia is that rare book to consider this phenomenon in all its complexity.Matthew Hayes focuses on North Americans relocating to Cuenca, Ecuador, the country’s third-largest city and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Many began relocating there after the 2008 economic crisis. Most are self-professed “economic refugees” who sought offshore retirement, affordable medical care, and/or a lower–cost location. Others, however, sought adventure marked by relocation to an unfamiliar cultural environment and to experience personal growth through travel, illustrative of contemporary cultures of aging. These life projects are often motivated by a desire to escape economic and political conditions in North America. Regardless of their individual motivations, Hayes argues, such North–South migrants remain embedded in unequal and unfair global social relations. He explores the repercussions on the host country-from rising prices for land and rent to the reproduction of colonial patterns of domination and subordination. In Ecuador, heritage preservation and tourism development reflect the interests and culture of European-descendent landowning elites, who have most to benefit from the new North–South migration. In the process, they participate in transnational gentrification that marginalizes popular traditions and nonwhite mestizo and indigenous informal workers. The contrast between the migration experiences of North Americans in Ecuador and those of Ecuadorians or others from such regions of the Global South in North America and Europe demonstrates that, in fact, what we face is not so much a global “migration crisis” but a crisis of global social justice.

This handsomely illustrated volume traces the intersections of art history and paintings restoration in nineteenth-century Europe.Repairing works of art and writing about them-the practices that became art conservation and art history-share a common ancestry. By the nineteenth century the two fields had become inseparably linked. While the art historical scholarship of this period has been widely studied, its restoration practices have received less scrutiny-until now. This book charts the intersections between art history and conservation in the treatment of Italian Renaissance paintings in nineteenth-century Europe. Initial chapters discuss the restoration of works by Giotto and Titian, framed by the contemporary scholarship of art historians such as Jacob Burckhardt, G. B. Cavalcaselle, and Joseph Crowe that was redefining the earlier age. Subsequent chapters recount how paintings conservation was integrated into museum settings. The narrative uses period texts, unpublished archival materials, and historical photographs in probing how paintings looked at a time when scholars were writing the foundational texts of art history, and how, simultaneously, contemporary restorers were negotiating the appearances of these works. The book proposes a model for a new conservation history, object focused yet enriched by consideration of a wider cultural horizon.

The surprising story of how a masterpiece of portraiture was discovered to be by Titian. Titian's portrait of Guidobaldo II with his son Francesco Maria represents the Duke of Urbino in his full power as supreme commander of papal troops, with his heir next to him. This rare, full-length double portrait has only recently been attributed to Titian after undergoing extensive analyses and restoration, revealing a beautiful painting in non finito or "not finished" manner, with bravura impasto passages entirely characteristic of the master, all of which is illustrated and explained in this new book.  This volume provides the first comprehensive examination of the painting's provenance, outlining the portrait's vicissitudes and reception at different moments in its near five-hundred-year history, reexamining its past ownership and presenting new documentary evidence to expand on and fill gaps in our knowledge of its whereabouts. The authors reflect on the technique, date, recent conservation, and authorship of the painting, proving it to be a masterpiece that only the great Titian could have created.

The hydrogen Lyman-alpha line is of utmost importance to many fields of astrophysics. This UV line being conveniently redshifted with distance to the visible and even near infrared wavelength ranges, it is observable from the ground, and provides the main observational window on the formation and evolution of high redshift galaxies. Absorbing systems that would otherwise go unnoticed are revealed through the Lyman-alpha forest, Lyman-limit, and damped Lyman-alpha systems, tracing the distribution of baryonic matter on large scales, and its chemical enrichment.We are living an exciting epoch with the advent of new instruments and facilities, on board of satellites and on the ground. Wide field and very sensitive integral field spectrographs are becoming available on the ground, such as MUSE at the ESO VLT. The giant E-ELT and TMT telescopes will foster a quantum leap in sensitivity and both spatial and spectroscopic resolution, to the point of being able, perhaps, to measure directly the acceleration of the Hubble flow. In space, the JWST will open new possibilities to study the Lyman-alpha emission of primordial galaxies in the near infrared. As long as the Hubble Space Telescope will remain available, the UV-restframe properties of nearby galaxies will be accessible to our knowledge. Therefore, this Saas-Fee course appears very timely and should meet the interest of many young researchers.

The hydrogen Lyman-alpha line is of utmost importance to many fields of astrophysics. This UV line being conveniently redshifted with distance to the visible and even near infrared wavelength ranges, it is observable from the ground, and provides the main observational window on the formation and evolution of high redshift galaxies. Absorbing systems that would otherwise go unnoticed are revealed through the Lyman-alpha forest, Lyman-limit, and damped Lyman-alpha systems, tracing the distribution of baryonic matter on large scales, and its chemical enrichment.We are living an exciting epoch with the advent of new instruments and facilities, on board of satellites and on the ground. Wide field and very sensitive integral field spectrographs are becoming available on the ground, such as MUSE at the ESO VLT. The giant E-ELT and TMT telescopes will foster a quantum leap in sensitivity and both spatial and spectroscopic resolution, to the point of being able, perhaps, to measure directly the acceleration of the Hubble flow. In space, the JWST will open new possibilities to study the Lyman-alpha emission of primordial galaxies in the near infrared. As long as the Hubble Space Telescope will remain available, the UV-restframe properties of nearby galaxies will be accessible to our knowledge. Therefore, this Saas-Fee course appears very timely and should meet the interest of many young researchers.