Rate My Professor Jim Ross-Nazzal

Dr. Jim Ross-Nazzal is a Professor of History and Humanities in the Ethnic and Gender Studies Programs at Houston Community College, where he has taught since 2006. He serves as the Inaugural Director of the Online Honors College and has been designated an Instructional Services Outstanding Faculty professor. Ross-Nazzal earned his PhD in History from Washington State University, focusing his dissertation on gender in the Middle East, Latin America, and the United States. Prior to joining HCC, he was history faculty at Montgomery College from 2000 to 2006, serving as Honors History Faculty, Chair of the Student Activities Committee, and Co-Chair of the Global Education Strategic Initiative Committee. He has taught in higher education since 1998 across on-campus and e-learning formats, with expertise in instructional design and new faculty training. A U.S. Army veteran, he has held numerous leadership roles at HCC, including History Discipline Chair from 2009 to 2011, Co-Director of the Africana/African American Studies Program, Co-Director of the Mexican American/Latino Studies Program, Dual Credit Coordinator, and member of the Open Educational Resources Committee, District Curriculum Team, and Faculty Senate.

Ross-Nazzal is an accomplished author and editor, with key publications including "Our Story: An Ancillary to US History: From Pre-Contact to Post-Factual America" (2018), an Open Educational Resource textbook co-authored with his students; "The Spirit of Magnolia Park: Ethnic Pride in a Mexican Community, 1909-2009" (Pearson, 2012); "A Pax Americana: The US Veto in the United Nations Security Council on the ‘Question of Palestine’ 1972-2007" (Edwin Mellen Press, 2008); contributions to "History in Dispute: The Middle East since 1945" (St. James Press, 2003), such as chapters on Israel’s nuclear weapons, the Gulf War, the Intifada, and the Oslo Accords; and "Progressivism and Civil Rights Movement, Environmentalism, Labor Movement, Populism, Public Education Reform, Socialism/Political Radicalism, Temperance, and Women's Rights" in the "Encyclopedia of American Reform Movements" (2013). A Webb-Smith award-winning author and West Houston Institute Innovation Fellow, he has served on the editorial board of the Journal of International Women's Studies since 2005 and edited Fronteras Unidas. His research interests encompass U.S. intelligence and counterinsurgency operations in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua from 1979 to 1990, women's history, ethnic studies, U.S. foreign policy, and diplomacy. Ross-Nazzal has presented public lectures on Mexican American music in the 1950s, African Americans and World War I, women and Blaxploitation movies, Houston and the Great Depression, the 1970s, and pre-9/11 Hip Hop. He teaches courses in US History, Mexican American history, Texas history, Cold War pop culture, and the 1970s through ethnic and gender studies perspectives.