Born and raised in New York City, Joe received bachelor of arts degrees in theology and history from Fordham University, Lincoln Center, before relocating to Boston for graduate school. There he received a master of theological studies in Islam from Harvard Divinity School, and a master of arts and doctoral degree from Harvard’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.
Joe has held one U.S. State Department and two U.S. Department of Education fellowships for the study of Arabic in Jordan and Oman. He is certified to translate and interpret Arabic by the New York University School of Professional Studies.
Joe has previously taught at Dartmouth College’s Department of Religion, and served a term of three years on the editorial team for Duke University Press’s Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies. He has held research appointments at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the Center for Black, Brown, and Queer Studies, the Institut d'études politiques de Paris, and the I Tatti Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence.
He currently serves as Vice President and Program Committee Chair for the Society for the Study of Muslim Ethics, and as Coeditor of the Ethics Section of the Religious Studies Review with Raissa von Doetinchem de Rande (Chicago Divinity School).
When not teaching, reading, or writing, Joe enjoys running medium distance races, playing real-time and turn-based strategy games, and spending far too much money on graphic tees.
Refereed Articles
"Special Issue Introduction" Body and Religion, 2025, 7.1, 1–6.
"'Refresh Your Hearts, that They Might Better Remember': Appeasing Desire in Medieval Islamic Scholarly Ethics," Body and Religion, 2025, 7.1, 86–113.
"Contagion, Causality, and Circumspection in a Late-Mamlūk Digest of Natural Philosophy," the Mamlūk Studies Review, 2023, XXVI, 155-183.
“Fear and Learning in Medieval Islam: Dread as Affective Marker for the Scholarly Class,” Body and Religion, 2020, 3.1, 27–51.
Special Issues
"Islamic Ethics Embodied: Premodern Discourses of Law, Affect, and Philosophy," Body and Religion, 2025, 7.1. (guest editor)
Encyclopedia Entries
“Food, Medicine, and Health in Medieval Islam,” In Dining with the Sultan: the Fine Art of Feasting, Los Angeles County Museum of Art & DelMonico Books, 2023, 46-7
Chapters in Preparation
“Mental Health and Wellness in Islamic Medical Traditions” The Cambridge History of Medicine, Vol. 2: Medieval Medicine, 600-1500, A. Ragab and Z. Mistry, eds.
“Tanning the Stomach: Pomegranates, Indigestion, and Aptitude in Medieval Islamic Learning,” in the Handbook on Religion and Food, Bloomsbury Publishing
“Grief, Mirth, and Equanimity in the Medieval Islamic Clinic,” in Deadly Psychiatry, the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study
Monographs in Preparation
Remembering Bodies: A Medieval Islamic History of Human Enhancement, Johns Hopkins University Press
Book Reviews
Models of Desire in Graeco-Arabic Philosophy: From Plotinus to Ibn Ṭufayl, by Bethany Somma (Brill, 2021), in The Journal of Arabic Literature, 2024, 55.2-3, 370–4.
Interviews, Promotion, and Outreach
"On Medieval Islamic Memory," For the Medical Record Podcast, the Johns Hopkins Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine; Apple Podcasts and Spotify, 2023
“An Islamicist at I Tatti,” I Tatti Center for Italian Renaissance Studies Newsletter, 2020, 4:6–7; link
Joe is a historian of medieval Islamic religion, science, and literature. His current research focuses on medical practices promoted by Arabic and Persian treatises of ethics between 900 and 1400 CE, especially as they relate to the enhancement of Muslim scholars’ intellectual capacities.
His broader interests include scholarly identity formation in medieval Islamic societies, premodern emotion and embodiment, queer sexualities of the medieval Middle East, and the depiction of Islam in video games, fantasy, and science fiction.
