Charlton Yingling, Ph.D.
Professor, Researcher, Author
Chaz Yingling is a scholar with wide-ranging interests. His work has appeared with leading journals and presses and has received various recognitions. Some work is free to read here.
His recent books and articles examine slavery and abolition, revolutions, religiosity, and interspecies history, especially animals' roles in human societies. His research has spanned the sixteenth century through the twenty-first century across the Americas. Along with new publications in progress on animals, ecologies, and empires, he is also pursuing publicly-engaged research projects studying histories and perceptions of catastrophic risk, space, the human future, and the unknown.
Chaz is an Associate Professor at the University of Louisville.
Articles
Leading journals in the discipline, like Past & Present, History Workshop Journal, Historical Journal, English Historical Review, Modern American History, Atlantic Studies, Early American Studies, among others, have published his articles. He has contributed chapters to a few books. Links and details appear below.
Books
-Siblings of Soil: Dominicans & Haitians in the Age of Revolutions (Austin: University of Texas Press, Lozano Long Series in Latin American Culture, 2022). Honorable Mention for the Duarte Prize from Latin American Studies Association Haiti & Dominican Republic Section in 2023.
-Canine Power: A Violent History of Race & Resilience (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2027), is co-authored with Tyler D. Parry. Details are in progress.
-The Once & Future Cow: Agency, Appetite, & the Anthropocene (London: Bloomsbury, 2026), is co-authored with Andrew Kettler. Details appear below.
-Statusquotastrophe, in progress and under contract. Co-authored with Marissa E. Yingling.
Canine Power:
A Violent History of Race & Resilience
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2027.
Co-authored with Tyler D. Parry.
Across the Atlantic world, canines were bred, trained, and unleashed to hunt enslaved people, crush resistance, patrol colonial borders, and enforce racial terror. From slave plantations and colonial outposts to Jim Crow streets and modern policing, dogs became living instruments of surveillance and state control —not merely companions to empire, but one of its most effective weapons. Canine Power traces the largely unknown roles of dogs in shaping slavery, colonialism, and racial control across the Americas and Africa from the pre-colonial era to the twenty-first century. At this same time, it is also a story of the resilience of the enslaved and colonized people who confronted, evaded, and survived these oppressive systems.
“Riveting and deeply unsettling, Canine Power offers a powerful account of how dogs were used in systems of oppression and control across centuries. A striking rethinking of their role in empire, slavery, and modern policing that changes how we see human-animal history.”
- Kellie Carter Jackson, Wellesley College
"[The authors] bring new attention to the role of dogs in slavery and colonialism. Their meticulous research reveals how systems of racial violence were enforced through everyday practices of control.”
- Harriet Ritvo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Once & Future Cow:
Agency, Appetite, & the Anthropocene
London: Bloomsbury, 2026.
Co-authored with Andrew Kettler.
"Charlton Yingling and Andrew Kettler show how our cattle-centric culture is a relatively recent development. And, in this, they offer hope: for if our culture's red meat hunger hasn't always been with us, change is possible. Their truly original book illustrates the urgency of seeing cattle as agents, not objects, when exploring historical records and addressing staggering ethical problems. These are among the reasons The Once & Future Cow is a tour de force, both timely and bold, arresting and illuminating."
-Carol J. Adams, eminent scholar of animals and ethics
"The Once & Future Cow makes a powerful argument that European settlements across the Atlantic, including efforts to control and profit from animal agents with consciousness, laid the foundations for the modern world's exploitative industrial beef economy that threatens the global environment. Kettler and Yingling ground big picture ethical arguments in a more specific and vital history of cattle economies of the Atlantic World, and especially the British Caribbean, where the developed alongside the institution of slavery."
-John Ryan Fischer, University of Wisconsin
"Kettler and Yingling's incisive historical investigations open up a series of of unexpected connections between the consumption of beef and dairy today...and colonial violence, slavery, and the introduction of cattle in the Caribbean and through the Americas... A remarkable feature of the book is the authors' ability to treat the cow as an intelligent animal with consciousness, agency, and even a capacity for resisting human designs. Truly a thoughtful, multispecies history of modern consumption and modernity.."
-Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago
Siblings of Soil:
Dominicans & Haitians in the Age of Revolutions
Austin: University of Texas Press, 2022
Lozano Long Series in Latin American Culture
Honorable Mention, 2023 Duarte Book Prize
Latin American Studies Association
Haiti & Dominican Republic Section
"Siblings of Soil is an excellent and urgently needed book. It tells the story of the Haitian Revolution and Haitian independence from a new and necessary vantage point (Santo Domingo), while also narrating the reality of Dominican decolonization and Haitian unification. The author situates this layered and complex narrative in the histories of the Spanish Empire, the French Empire, the Haitian Revolution, and Latin American wars for independence, placing it at the crux of multiple historiographies for a broad audience."
- Julia Gaffield, College of William & Mary
"Yingling offers a major contribution to the scholarship on the Age of Revolutions through the lens of the island of Hispaniola. His well-researched and illuminating presentation challenges historical distortions and sheds light on cooperative anticolonial defiance and political and cultural interdependence between Haitians and the Dominicans in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries."
- Michele Reid-Vazquez, University of Pittsburgh
"...Grounded in astonishing archival research that spans Europe, the Caribbean, the United States, and Australia, Siblings of Soil demonstrates how African descendants across Hispaniola collaborated across time to ultimately unify the island under Haiti in 1822. This contribution centers the whole island in the broader historical literature on the Age of Revolutions. It moreover is a poignant reminder of a bygone era of cooperation in the forging of an independent, anti-slavery, and anti-colonial Black state. ...the committee commends Siblings of Soil for its extraordinary research and timely innovation."
- Duarte Book Prize Committee, 2023
"Yingling...masterfully [argues] that the Dominican Republic did not gain independence from but rather separated itself from Haiti. He also provides pertinent examples of Dominican influence on Haiti in its early years and of collaborative efforts between the two 'siblings.' ... Importantly, Yingling locates Santo Domingo in the historiography of the Age of Revolutions. Haiti, at least, has received more recognition in this era given the significance of the Haitian Revolution... This well-researched book incorporates archival material from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, France, Spain...and Vatican City... Highly recommended."
- CHOICE
"Siblings of Soil successfully delineates the importance of an archivally grounded understanding of the history of the island and is a notable contribution to the historiographical effort, expanding how we under‐stand the revolutionary age to have been lived."
- H-Caribbean Reviews
"[Siblings of Soil] is a welcome contribution to a range of historiographies, and it sheds light on a too-often overlooked part of the Age of Revolutions ... Yingling has produced a significant work that belongs in the libraries of scholars on both sides of the Atlantic."
- H-Slavery Reviews
"The book should be helpful to historians of the Haitian Revolution...[with] new information gleaned in Spanish-language archives... Yingling also seeks to appeal to Latin American historians who could learn from 'perhaps the most peaceful and innovative independence in Latin America,' which achieved autonomy and abolition earlier and less bloodily than most countries in the region."
- American Historical Review
"This history of the Haitian Revolution in Santo Domingo makes one story out of many distinct threads."
- Hispanic American Historical Review
"This deeply researched book offers important analysis of the relationships between Haitians and Dominicans and their conjoined struggles for independence. Anyone interested in the history of the Caribbean, the Age of Revolutions, slavery and race in the Americas, or anti-imperial movements would do well to read this book."
- Journal of Global South Studies
Contact
He spends a lot of time on social media and takes it very seriously. Follow here!
Think twice before outsourcing the privilege of deep, critical, original thinking to clickbait influencers, algorithms, and podcasters lacking in quality and credibility.
(Chaz is not on social media, [TikTok, Bluesky, X, MySpace, Reddit, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram etc.].
Accounts with similar names are not his.)
Please send questions, comments, or conversation starters to a real human at:
charlton (dot) yingling (at) louisville (dot) edu
OR
chazyingling (at) gmail (dot) com