Tim Portice (Princeton, New Jersey)

Timothy Portice began studying Russian in high school, where his ego was routinely bruised by his 7 year-old Russian classmates in a bizarre Russian remake of "Billy Madison". Having caught the Russian bug, he decided to go to the University of Michigan where he majored in Russian and Comparative Literature, and spent his junior year at St. Petersburg State University. After a brief stint at the Ann Arbor YMCA and teaching English in Moscow, he enrolled in a PhD program at Princeton University, and is currently finishing his dissertation on the sublime in Russian literature. Tim has brought several groups of students to Russia, and served as the CLS Site Director in Astrakhan, Russia in 2008 and 2009. In addition to his academic work, Tim's interests include prophecy, deserts, formal analyses of hip hop, and backgammon.