Charles Houston Long (August 23, 1926 – February 12, 2020) was an African-American cultural historian, religious studies scholar, and essayist in the areas of religion, theology, philosophy and studies of modernity. He was a faculty member at the University of Chicago, UNC Chapel Hill, Syracuse University, Duke University, and UC Santa Barbara. His work built on Ferdinand de Saussure's semiotics. Significations in particular is about how the West gets to make meaning about other cultures, but those cultures don't get the opportunity to make meaning about themselves.