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Laurie L. Patton, Charles Howard Candler Professor (1996). She earned her B.A. from Harvard University and her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. For several years during the last two decades she has made her Indian home in Pune, Maharashtra. Her scholarly interests are in the interpretation of early Indian ritual and narrative, comparative mythology, literary theory in the study of religion, and women and Hinduism in contemporary India.

In addition to over 45 articles in these fields, she is the author or editor of seven books: Authority, Anxiety, and Canon: Essays in Vedic Interpretation (ed.,1994); Myth as Argument: The Brhaddevata as Canonical Commentary (author, 1996); Myth and Method (ed., with Wendy Doniger,1996); Jewels of Authority: Women and Text in the Hindu Tradition (ed., 2002); Bringing the Gods to Mind: Mantra and Ritual in Early Indian Sacrifice (author, 2004) and The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History (ed., with Edwin Bryant, 2005) ; Notes from a Mandala: Essays in the Indian History of Religions in Honor of Wendy Doniger (ed., with David Haberman, forthcoming). Her book of poetry, Fire’s Goal: Poems from a Hindu Year, was published by White Clouds Press in 2003, and her translation of the Bhagavad Gita was published in 2008 by Penguin Press Classics Series. Her next book of poetry, just completed, focuses on the weekly parshiyot of the Jewish ritual year.

She has worked as a Fulbright scholar in Israel in 2000, and again in 2004 where she was completing research for her forthcoming book, Grandmother Language: Women and Sanskrit in Maharashtra and Beyond. She is also completing a methodological work, Scholar and the Fool: The Secular Scholar of Religion and 21st Century Publics (contracted with University of Chicago Press).

Prof. Patton served as Chair of the Department from 2000-2007, as Co-convenor of the Religions and the Human Spirit Strategic Plan from 2005-2007, and as Winship Distinguished Research Professor from 2003-06. She was the recipient of Emory’s highest award for teaching, the Emory Williams Award, in 2006. She currently serves as the Director of Faculty Development and Excellence in the Office of the Associate Provost for Academic Affairs at Emory University.

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