Joel Dinerstein is the Clark Endowed Chair in American Civilization and the Director of American Studies at Tulane University. He is the author and curator of American Cool, a photography and popular culture exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution that ran for the first half of 2014. He has been writing and lecturing on the concept of cool for more than a decade and for 15 years he has taught a course entitled, "The History of Being Cool in America." He is also the author of an award-winning cultural history of jazz and industrialization, Swinging the Machine: Modernity, Technology, and African-American Culture. He has been a consultant on jazz and popular music for Putumayo Records, HBO's Boardwalk Empire, and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). #TEDxNashville @JoelDinerstein

Alphachimp scribe: What is the definition of 'cool' and why is it essential to social innovation? 

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