Sylvia Grider

Early life and education

Sylvia Grider was born in 1940 in Pampa, Texas, and finished high school there in 1959. A Cabot Scholarship took her to the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned a BA in Latin in 1963 and an MA in history with a minor in classical civilization in 1967. Between those degrees, she taught at Caprock High School in Amarillo.

While at UT Austin, she joined an archaeological dig in Corinth, Greece. She later said the folktales and legends she heard from Greek workmen on that dig were far more interesting than the excavation itself, and that experience sparked her interest in folklore. After teaching at N. R. Crozier Technical High School in Dallas, she completed a PhD at Indiana University’s Folklore Institute in 1976.

Selected publications

Grider's 1975 article "Con Safos: Mexican-Americans, Names and Graffiti" appeared in The Journal of American Folklore. That same year she published "The Shotgun House in Oil Boomtowns of The Texas Panhandle" in Pioneer America. In 1980 she contributed two pieces to Western Folklore: "The Study of Children's Folklore" and "A Select Bibliography of Childlore". Her 1995 essay "Passed down from Generation to Generation: Folklore and Teaching" was published in The Journal of American Folklore.

Her 2001 article "Spontaneous Shrines: A Modern Response to Tragedy and Disaster" appeared in New Directions in Folklore. She co-edited with Rodenberger the 2003 collection Let's hear it : stories by Texas women writers. In 2007 she co-authored Haunting experiences: ghosts in contemporary folklore with Diane E. Goldstein and Jeannie B. Thomas, and published "Public Grief and the Politics of Memorial: Contesting the Memory of 'the Shooters' at Columbine High School" in Anthropology Today.

Her 2011 chapter "Memorializing Shooters with Their Victims: Columbine, Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois University" appeared in the book Grassroots Memorials: The Politics of Memorializing Traumatic Death, edited by P. J. Margry and C. Sánchez-Carretero.

Did You Know?

• Grider directed the university's Bonfire Memorabilia Collection Project after the 1999 Aggie Bonfire collapse.
• She was Assistant Dean of the Graduate College at Texas A&M from 1981 to 1984.
• She taught folklore in the departments of English, History, and Humanities in Medicine at Texas A&M.