Joel Dinerstein

writer & professor
cool, music, race,
& Jewish Lit

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My TEDx Talk: Why Cool Matters

May 08, 2015

The French have chic; Americans invented cool. The origins of the most global of American cultural concepts, featuring Lester Young, Patti Smith, and Elvis, with sidebars to Johnny Cash, Dylan, and Prince. Why Cool Matters.

Joel Dinerstein is a Professor of English at Tulane University in New Orleans, where he also holds a Sizeler Professorship in Jewish Studies. He is the author of six books, including a new memoir of his immigrant Jewish family, The Last of the Ellis Island Jews: A Brooklyn Memoir (2026). He also edits a new series, Lost Classics of Jewish Literature (UNO Press). He teaches and lectures on race and racism, whether anti-Semitism or anti-Black racism. His books have emerged from his classes: History of Cool; Intro to Fiction: Race/Inclusion; Jewish-American Literature; Jews & Race.

Dinerstein is a cultural historian and a renowned expert on the concept of cool, as laid out in his TED Talk, “Why Cool Matters.” He wrote the first history of the concept (The Origins of Cool), curated the first exhibit of its icons at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery (American Cool, 2014), and co-wrote its catalogue. His corporate study, Coach: A Story of New York Cool, is now a collector’s item.

Dinerstein is also a jazz scholar. His first book was an award-winning theory of jazz and industrialization — Swinging the Machine: Modernity, Technology, and African American Culture Between the World Wars (2003) — and his most recent book is a short narrative history of jazz’s emergence in five urban Black neighborhoods, Jazz: A Quick Immersion (2020). He was a jazz DJ for a decade on WWOZ-FM in New Orleans, and he is currently a consultant to the New Orleans Jazz Museum.