She earned an A.B. in anthropology from the University of Georgia, and a Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The recipient of the Barra Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania’s McNeil Center for Early American Studies, Snyder spent two years in Philadelphia before accepting her current position. At Indiana University, Snyder offers courses in Native American and Indigenous studies and American history, and her excellence in teaching has been recognized with a Trustees’ Teaching Award and an appearance on C-SPAN’s Lectures in History.