The Institute for Religious Studies at the University of Heidelberg released a new issue of its Online – Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet (Vol 9, 2015). It features "a multitude of articles, ranging from the crowdfunding of a new church, shari'a in cyberspace, the pope on Twitter, the internet site of Ahmadiyya in Germany, online authority of the minority of the Kyais in Indonesia and attitutes towards women's participation in public prayer in Judaism and Islam as well as a book review of Cybertheolgy: Thinking Christianity in The Era of the Internet."

The authors examine the historically overlooked motrebi milieu, with its marginalized characters, from luti to gardan koloft and mashti, as well as the tenacity of motreb who continued their careers against all odds. They then turn to losanjelesi, the most pervasive form of Iranian popular music that developed as motrebi declined, and related musical forms in Iran and its diasporic popular cultural centre, Los Angeles. For the first time in English, the book makes available musical transcriptions, analysis and lyrics that illustrate the complexities of this history.

The book considers Al Jazeera English's position in the global news environment. The Middle East has been a particular focus of global crisis reporting. Yet, international coverage of these conflicts has historically been presented through a 'Western' perspective. The absence of Arab voices in the global public sphere has created a discursive gap between the Middle East and the rest of the world. The arrival of Al Jazeera English might, therefore, be regarded as an attempt to bridge this gap by broadcasting discourses from and about the Arab world. Using a framing analysis of selected news reports by Al Jazeera English before and after the so-called 'Arab Spring' protests, this book considers Al Jazeera English's position in the global news environment and identifies the extent to which it addresses this gap between the Arab and global spheres.

The book traces how the West is represented as the Occident in the country's media. From the Qajar period and the Tobacco protests of the late nineteenth century to the ill-fated Anglo-Persian Treaty of 1919, through to the 1953 coup and 1979 hostage crisis, the author highlights the various points in history when misinterpretations and conflicts led to a demonisation of the other in the Iranian media. The major recent source of contention between the West and Iran has of course been the nuclear issue and the resultant regime of sanctions. By examining how this and other issues have been represented by the Iranian press, Bakshandeh offers a crucial and often-overlooked aspect of the key relationship between Iran and the West.

The book offers a detailed account of the ways recent cinematic and artistic works engage Europe’s increasingly diverse and complex relationship to migration. With a focus on projects that explore the sociopolitical tensions that have surrounded migration in Europe since the 1990s, the author draws on theories of migrant and diasporic cinema, projected image art, and mobility studies to provide historically situated close readings of films, videos, and cinematic installations that concern migratory networks, infrastructures, and places across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.