Laura Brubaker’s essay “Klimov’s Come and See as a Work of Cinematic Response” was written in the fall of 2010 for a WR 100 seminar on Soviet cinema. It was submitted for the third and final assignment in the course, having grown out of an impressive comparison and contrast of Klimov’s film with Andrei Tarkovskii’s Ivan’s Childhood that Ms. Brubaker submitted for her second assignment. (It was entitled “Objectivity and Subjectivity in Ivan’s Childhood and Come and See.”) Ms. Brubaker’s argument concerning the two films’ relationships to one another not only met the expectations of the second essay assignment in exemplary fashion, but it also clearly had the potential to develop into something broader and more sophisticated. In such cases, especially when the writer in question is as talented and motivated as Ms. Brubaker, I permit students to continue developing their projects for the next assignment rather than starting a new one from scratch. This emphasizes the nature of the essay as a “project,” not just an assignment, and it thereby simulates professional writing more organically than requiring three distinct “papers” does. It also allows students the opportunity to spend time cultivating their ideas and harvesting the fruit born of them. As the following essay shows, Ms. Brubaker, a remarkably gifted, diligent, and intellectually curious young woman, took this opportunity and made it golden.
— IVAN EUBANKS