Laurie L. Patton is an American academic, author and poet. She is the dean of Arts and Sciences and professor of religion at Duke University. Previously, she was the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Early Indian Religions at Emory University. In 2006, she was the recipient of the Emory Williams Award for excellence in teaching. Patton graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut, holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard, a doctorate from the University of Chicago, and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 2000. She focuses her research on early Indian rituals, narrative and mythology, literary theory in religious studies, and Hinduism in modern India. She has published on the interpretation of early Indian ritual and narrative, comparative mythology, literary theory in the study of religion, women and Hinduism in contemporary India, and religion and conflict. Her early Indological work applies literary theory and theory of canon to the texts of early India, particularly Vedic texts. Later, she used a theory of metonymy to rethink the application of mantras in early Indian ritual.