Beginning the 2013 Capstones

Yesterday Clayton Baumgartner, one of the fourth-year college seminarians of Mount Angel Seminary, presented his senior capstone project.  Clayton, a seminarian for the Diocese of Sacramento, entitled his project "A Storyteller's Friend: How J.F.Powers Offers Friendship through a Proxy Ethos."

Clayton Baumgartner

According to Clayton, he drew from two of his seminary courses as he developed his capstone, Religion and Literature and Theoretical Issues in Literary Studies.  He applied some of the work of Wayne Booth to the work of J.F. Powers.  Clayton used Booth's notion of the companionship offered by the authorial presence from Booth's book The Company We Keep.

Dr. Creighton Lindsay served as the director for Clayton's project, and Dr. Seymour House served as the second reader.  Sister Hilda Kleiman, OSB, served as the English standards reader.  Clayton also acknowledged the guidance of Abbot Peter Eberle and Father Richard Koelker.