Charlie Hankin is a doctoral candidate in Spanish and Portuguese. He is interested broadly in intermedial, transnational resonances between music, literature, and performance in the non-Anglophone Atlantic. Grounded in literary and cultural studies, his research also includes extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Cuba, Brazil, and Haiti.

Charlie’s dissertation, “Break and Flow” focuses on hip-hop poetics in Brazil, Cuba, and Haiti. Tracing Latin American rap’s iterations and innovations—its breaks and flows—the project aims to shed light on how knowledge is produced and distributed in the Global South by means of new media and to expand our notions of the nature and function of writing and acoustics at the turn of the millennium. 

Before coming to Princeton, Charlie was a Fulbright ETA in Fortaleza, Brazil (2015). He completed his B.A. at Reed College (Spanish) and also holds a Master of Music in Violin Performance from the University of Oregon, with a focus on early-Baroque performance practice. He has performed, recorded, and taught as a professional violinist, including with the Instituto de Música Suzuki de Córdoba (Veracruz, Mexico). Recording collaborations with Latin American hip-hop artists include the CubaDisco-nominated album Sentimientos Desafinados, with Cuban producer Malcoms “Justicia,” as well as Kwonik on GetoYout and R.O.D Rhod over D-Fi, with Haitian rapper D-Fi.