Many of use music from an era to open a lecture or for discussion, but one approach I have taken the past few years is to encourage students to try and think of songs they know that fit with main themes of a period. I’ve developed my own (and made videos with images from the time period to present the material in a fun way). I try to incorporate the ideas from the song into my lecture (such as “why would it be so hard to lay down” in the age of colonialism? or “did it seem like Americans were insistent on burning down their own society from the 1830s through the 1850s?) So here’s my playlist … any other ideas: