She served as chair of the department from 2000 to 2007, as conveyor of the Religions and the Human Spirit Strategic Plan from 2005 to 2007, and as the Winship Distinguished Research Professor from 2003 to 2006.

She focuses her research on early Indian rituals, narrative and mythology, literary theory in religious studies, and Hinduism in modern India.

Her first edited work, Authority, Anxiety, and Canon (1994) surveyed the larger field of Vedic interpretation as it existed in various intellectual contexts throughout India.

Patton has also worked on gender questions, beginning with her edited volume, Jewels of Authority (2002), which examined early feminist stereotypes about women in Indian textual traditions as well as contemporary life.

[citation needed] Her translation of the Bhagavad Gita in the Penguin Classics Series follows a free verse style constrained by eight line stanzas.