English

Joel Dinerstein
Associate Professor
Director, New Orleans Center for the Gulf South
Director, American Studies Program
US Modernism, Cultural Studies, Race and Ethnicity, 19^th and 20^th Century US Literature, Technology Studies, African-American Studiess

Norman Mayer Room 208
Newcomb Hall 112

Telephone: (504) 862-8168 or (504) 314-2883
Fax: (504) 862-8958
E-mail: jdinerst@tulane.edu
CV

Joel Dinerstein is an Associate Professor of English and the Director of the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University. He is the author of an award-winning work of cultural studies theorizing the relationship of jazz and industrialization, Swinging the Machine: Modernity, Technology, and African-American Culture Between the World Wars (2003). For the last several years, he has been theorizing the concept of cool in American culture for a forthcoming work, The Origins of Cool: Jazz, Film Noir, and Existentialism in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press, 2014). He is currently co-curating an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery entitled American Cool, a photography and American Studies exhibit of 100 icons of cool scheduled to open in March 2014.  Dinerstein received his Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and subsequently a Woodrow Wilson Postdoctoral Fellowship to the Society for the Humanities at Cornell University. He has also received the Tulane University Student Body Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. In terms of community service, Dinerstein is a jazz DJ on WWOZ-FM (90.7) in New Orleans where he delivers the "Jazz Morning Set" on early Monday mornings. He has also served as a consultant on jazz for the NEH, for Putumayo Records (Jazz, 2011) and for the HBO drama, Boardwalk Empire.