He came to MICA in 1994 to join the faculty of the Department of Art History—now Art History, Theory, and Criticism—to teach courses in his specialties of Classical and Near Eastern art, as well as introductory courses and courses in art historical method and theory.

Early in his tenure at MICA, Joe volunteered to help with administrative work, including as co-coordinator of the original Division of Liberal Arts, chairman of the Art History department, and chairman of the Faculty Executive Committee. In 2012, he was appointed MICA’s first Associate Dean of Liberal Arts.

As an archaeologist Joe has excavated in the US, Greece, and Italy, and most recently has been Associate Director of the Brown University excavations at the Great Temple in Petra, Jordan, from 1997 to 2006. As an art historian, his research focuses on “hybrid” and “synchretic” art in Classical antiquity, Greek vase painting, and the history of archaeology, and he has published articles in Near Eastern Archaeology, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, Petra Great Temple Reports, Archaeology Odyssey, Archaeologia Transatlantica, Classical World, Oxford Companion to Archaeology, Archaeological Method and Theory: An Encyclopedia, Revue des archéologues et historiens d’art de Louvain, and Brown Classical Journal. He is currently working on Warriors in Stone, a book on commemorative warrior statuary in the Iron Age Mediterranean, for Cambria Press.