Sonia Hazard (NHC Fellow, 2024–25)

Fellowship Work Summary, 2024–25

Sonia Hazard drafted a chapter and substantially advanced the research for her book in progress, Christianity and the Book in the Cherokee Diaspora, 1821–1861. She wrote the final chapter and then revised and submitted her book, Empire of Print: Evangelical Power in an Age of Mass Media (Oxford University Press, forthcoming, November 2025).

Hazard also made substantial progress on other projects during her fellowship year: 

• She revised the chapter, “Shaker Mass Media for the ‘Inhabitants of Earth’,” for Shakers at the Center: Manifesting Spirits and Spectacles in Nineteenth-Century America, edited by Douglas Winiarski (University of Massachusetts Press, forthcoming, 2026)
• She wrote a keyword essay on “Paper” for Material Religion (forthcoming, 2025)
• With David R. Hall, she coauthored and submitted for review the article, “How Christian Scientists Heal: The Ontological Turn and the Labor of the Supernatural”

She also edited two special issues of journals: 

• With Elizabeth A. Cecil, she published “Material Texts: Religion, Mobility, and Responsibility,” a special issue of Textual Cultures (2024), along with a co-authored introduction
• Also with Cecil, she submitted for review “More-than-human Religion: Indigeneity, Objects, and Ecologies,” a special double issue of Numen featuring an article-length editors’ introduction