Teaching history can be a difficult task. In the past, emphasis was on the memorization of dates and events, which may seem tedious and boring to the average student. Current approaches have shifted towards historical understanding, identifying the cause and effects of particular historical events as opposed to merely knowing what happened. Even this newer emphasis, however, can be frustrating if the students are not engaged in the coursework.
Professor Chad William Timm of Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, understands those difficulties and has found ways to circumvent them by incorporating popular culture into his classroom. In his 2025 book Teaching History with Popular Media: Strategies for Inquiry Base Learning, Timm provides a number of examples, each specifically designed to transform music, graphic narratives, and movies into legitimate and powerful educational tools.
“Whether you are a middle or high school history teacher, a college professor preparing future history teachers, or just someone interested in how to think more historically about popular media, there is a lot to learn from how movies, music, and graphic narratives contribute to constructing our collective memories of the past,” Timm explains in the opening pages. “This book offers tools for teaching our students, and each other, how to understand the relationship between popular media and U.S. history so that we can be more engaged citizens.”
Chad Timm uses the song “Ludlow Massacre” by twentieth century folksinger Woody Guthrie as one of his first examples, emphasizing the song’s ability to build historical thinking skills in students and offer alternative viewpoints.
“Using Guthrie’s music in the history classroom allows teachers to introduce historical events and perspectives not represented in most history textbooks, especially the struggles between workers and corporations,” Timm writes. “Songs about labor typically emphasize topics like industrialization, struggles for fair pay and safe working conditions, and the importance of labor unions. Guthrie’s storytelling is particularly compelling because his songs present a counternarrative that challenges listeners to consider different perspectives, and his folk-storytelling style forces listeners to pay close attention.”
“Ludlow Massacre” recites the story of striking migrant coals miners in the town of Ludlow clashing with the Colorado National Guard on April 20, 1914. Gunshots were fired and the tents miners lived in were set on fire. Twenty people died as a result, including two women and eleven children. Although Guthrie placed the blame squarely on the mine owners and National Guard in his 1944 song, questions about how and why the violence erupted are still debated to this day.
Timm’s classroom examination of “Ludlow Massacre” was a two-day mini-unit incorporated into a larger eleventh grade course on the Industrial Revolution. On the first day, students were tasked with using Guthrie’s song to choose a central question for the class to focus on. After listening to “Ludlow Massacre” and studying its lyrics, the students brainstormed questions, which ranged from “Why did they kill the children?” to “Whose perspective is this from?” They then ranked the questions by importance – in the example contained in Teaching History with Popular Media, the one ultimately selected was “What caused the violence at Ludlow?”
Students were next given what Chad Timm refers to as a “context creator,” which in this case was an essay by historian Thomas Andrews that gave a broader outline of events and their major players. Primary sources were then used to create a timeline. The next day, additional sources were examined, after which students compiled a list of fifteen potential reasons for the violence that erupted in Ludlow in April 1914.
After discussing and prioritizing the potential causes, students again listened to Guthrie’s “Ludlow Massacre” and reread the lyrics, only this time with a greater understanding of the events detailed in the song. Timm then asked the class, “What does the song tell you about our central question and the causes of violence at Ludlow?” – bringing the discussion full-circle in the process.
In the film section of Teaching History with Popular Media, Chad Timm includes the 2014 historical drama Selma, which tells the story of the Civil Rights Movement’s efforts to enforce voting rights in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. Timm’s goal was not merely to teach history, however, but the democratic process and the need for informed action as well.
“(Director) Ava DuVernay’s Selma specifically, and the actual Civil Rights Movement more broadly, present an ideal opportunity to highlight people taking informed action in popular media,” Timm writes. “Centering on efforts of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee (SNCC) to demonstrate the need for federal voting rights legislation, the film highlights a broad range of deliberative and democratic processes ranging from lobbying, voting, petitioning, and educating to assembling, marching, and engaging in civil disobedience.”
Just as with “Ludlow Massacre,” Selma was a mini-unit contained within a larger course, in this case a three-week study of the 1960s by eleventh grade students. Instead of students choosing a central question to consider, however, Chad Timm provided it himself: “How were the tactics used by the civil rights advocates successful in advancing equality?” He also added two learning objectives – “I can identify examples of taking informed action in scenes from the movie” and “I can evaluate why taking action mattered and the potential risks involved in each scene.”
Time constraints necessitated that only a handful of scenes from Selma being screened as opposed to the entire movie. To compensate, Timm provided an overview of events, then establishing a timeline and placed them in a historical context. There were a total of seven scenes selected that not only included examples of voting and marching but lobbying, petitioning, and educating as well. After each scene, students identified the direct action taken and then explained why that particular action was necessary. Students were then asked to identify which action was most effective and why.
Students next analyzed the Oscar-winning song “Glory,” written specifically for Selma. “‘Glory’ was ideal for this mini-unit because the song references historical figures of the Civil Rights Movement, like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr., but also mentions more recent struggles like the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri,” Chad Timm explains. The larger scope of the song thus allowed students to connect events from the 1960s with their own time period.
Teaching History with Popular Media also includes an examination of graphic narratives to complement its exploration of music and movies, with each section featuring three examples. In addition to Woody Guthrie’s “Ludlow Massacre,” for instance, the book includes chapters on the Broadway musical Hamilton and songs of the Civil Rights Movement, while Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film Lincoln and the 2016 film Hidden Figures are featured in the movie section.
As for graphic narratives, chapters explore The Life of Frederick Douglass by David F. Walker, The Harlem Hellfighters by Caanan White and Max Brooks, and George Takei’s They Called Us Enemy.
Each of these selections offers insights into actual historical events and are educational in their own right. For Chad William Timm, however, imparting knowledge of the past is just part of his overall mission as he also believes that history can be used to prepare students for their future, imparting the skills necessary to not only succeed but become better citizens in the process.
“Beginning with introducing the concept of historical thinking early in the semester and progressing all the way to analyzing democratic processes and taking informed action, your student’s engagement is directly linked to the frequency with which they can connect what they are learning to their lives outside of school,” Timm explains. “Finding a healthy balance between the ‘content’ and building historical thinking skills while making connections to popular media fuels their interest and, with it, motivation and engagement.”
Ultimately, that assessment is the true lesson of Teaching History with Popular Media.
Anthony Letizia