Joe Alicea earned his Bachelor of Arts at St. John’s College in Annapolis with two majors, the first in Philosophy and the second in History of Science and Mathematics, and two minors, one in Comparative Literature and the other in Classical Studies. Joe took three semesters of Ancient Greek in translation and an additional three semesters of French in translation; during this time he translated the first book of Euclid’s Elements, excerpts of Aristotle's Politics, Derrida’s Feu la cendre, and several of Molière’s plays. Joe’s principal interests during the beginning of his studies at St. John’s were in the philosophies of Descartes and Spinoza, St. Augustine’s Confessions, and the plays and poetry of Shakespeare. His absorption in these areas would lead to an award for the best written essay by an undergraduate in 2012 for his sophomore thesis - an analysis of the mutability of identity in King Lear with a thorough discourse on theories of relationalism. This thesis and its methods of critique and analysis are precursory to Joe’s current interests in phenomenolgy, philology German hermeneutics, and modernist literature. At the moment, Joe is primarily reading the later journals of Wittgenstein, the later works of Derrida, the prose and poetry of Wallace Stevens, and the early prose and poetry of David Foster Wallace. The time between his philosophizing in college and now was spent with friends and family as an onsite mathematics tutor for students at LVL High School in la Villita of southside Chicago.
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