2013-2014: 1
Independent Scholar Award
Introduction:
The Independent Scholar Award has been created as a way to help students better prepare for college
by reading a challenging list of classic literary texts. Many of these texts are studied in Upper School
literature courses; many are not. Students may begin reading these texts during the summer prior to
their freshman year and have until May of their senior year to complete the program. ISA books will
count toward the Summer Reading program, and each text, as a literary classic, will be worth double
points. Please note that productions of plays and movies do not count for the ISA; one must read the
actual text.
Requirements:
1) Students must read all books in “The 40” plus all 10 books from one of the specialized lists for a
total of 50 books.
2) Each student must keep a reading journal and complete 50 entries – one per text, to be written
after finishing the text. Journal entries can be informal, and they should provide evidence of the
student’s engagement with the text well beyond plot summary and description. This could
include a discussion of its themes, characterization, or tone, any intertextual connections
between this text and others, links between the book and the student’s own life, relations to
popular culture, current events, etc. Each entry, if typed, should be at least two full pages,
double spaced; if one prefers to handwrite entries, each should be at least three full pages,
double spaced. Each student should make an appointment with Mr. Davis, Ms. Guggenheim, or
Ms. Jenkins after completing the first two journal entries to make sure they meet these
guidelines. Students should also meet with one of these teachers upon reaching the halfway
point in their reading (after writing 25 journal entries) as well as after all 50 entries have been
completed.
3) Each student will also produce a culminating project. As this is an award for independent
scholarship, each student must come up with h/er own project idea (with the approval of two of
the three Upper School English teachers).
Deadline:
In order to be eligible to receive the ISA at the Upper School Awards Ceremony at the end of May, your
journal and project must be completed and turned in to Ms. Jenkins, Mr. Davis, or Ms. Guggenheim by
May 1.
2013-2014: 2
“The 40”
Achebe, Chinua
Alcott, Louisa May
Atwood, Margaret
Austen, Jane
Bronte, Emily
Cather, Willa
Conrad, Joseph
Crane, Stephen
Dickens, Charles
Dostoevsky, Fyodor
Douglass, Frederick
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Hemingway, Ernest
Homer
Hurston, Zora Neale
Kafka, Franz
Knowles, John
Lee, Harper
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia
Miller, Arthur
Morrison, Toni
Orwell, George
Salinger, J.D.
Shakespeare, William
Shelley, Mary
Sinclair, Upton
Sophocles
Steinbeck, John
Stoker, Bram
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Thoreau, Henry David
Twain, Mark
Vonnegut, Kurt
Walker, Alice
Wells, H. G.
Wharton, Edith
Whitman, Walt
Woolf, Virginia
Wright, Richard
Things Fall Apart
Little Women
The Handmaid’s Tale
Pride and Prejudice
Wuthering Heights
My Antonia
Heart of Darkness
Red Badge of Courage
A Tale of Two Cities
Crime and Punishment
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave
The Great Gatsby
The Scarlet Letter
The Sun Also Rises
The Odyssey
Their Eyes Were Watching God
The Metamorphosis
A Separate Peace
To Kill a Mockingbird
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Death of a Salesman
Beloved
1984
Catcher in the Rye
Hamlet
Frankenstein
The Jungle
Oedipus Rex
The Grapes of Wrath
Dracula
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Walden
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Color Purple
The War of the Worlds
Ethan Frome
Leaves of Grass
To The Lighthouse
Native Son
2013-2014: 3
The Marathon
Alighieri, Dante
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Faulkner, William
Heller, Joseph
Hugo, Victor
Joyce, James
Melville, Herman
Milton, John
Stein, Gertrude
Pynchon, Thomas
The Inferno
The Canterbury Tales
The Sound and the Fury
Catch-22
Les Miserables
Ulysses
Moby Dick
Paradise Lost
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
The Crying of Lot 49
Women’s List
Bronte, Charlotte*
Behn, Aphra
Cisneros, Sandra
Desai, Anita
Eliot, George
Erdrich, Louise
Plath, Sylvia
Rhys, Jean*
Wollstonecraft, Mary
Woolf, Virginia
Jane Eyre
Oroonoko
The House on Mango Street
Fasting, Feasting
The Mill on the Floss
Tracks
The Bell Jar
Wide Sargasso Sea
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Room of One’s Own
* Due to shared subject matter, one should read Bronte’s Jane Eyre prior to Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea.
African-American List
Angelou, Maya
Baldwin, James
Butler, Octavia
Ellison, Ralph
French, Albert
Gaines, Ernest J.
Hughes, Langston
Morrison, Toni
Naylor, Gloria
Wilson, Harriet
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Go Tell It on the Mountain
Wild Seed
Invisible Man
Billy
A Lesson Before Dying
The Ways of White Folks
Song of Solomon
Mama Day
Our Nig
2013-2014: 4
Nonfiction List
Adams, Henry
Bunyan, John
Dinesen, Isak
DuBois, W. E. B.
Frank, Anne
Machiavelli, Niccolo
Nafisi, Azar
Washington, Booker T.
Wiesel, Elie
Wolff, Tobias
The Education of Henry Adams
Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners
Out of Africa
The Souls of Black Folk
The Diary of a Young Girl
The Prince
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Up From Slavery
Night
This Boy’s Life
Drama List
Beckett, Samuel
Chekhov, Anton
Euripedes
Ibsen, Henrik
Moliere
O’Neill, Eugene
Wedekind, Frank
Wilde, Oscar
Wilder, Thornton
Wilson, August
Waiting for Godot
The Cherry Orchard
The Trojan Women
A Doll’s House
The Misanthrope
Long Day’s Journey Into Night
Spring Awakening
The Importance of Being Earnest
Our Town
Fences
** As the Independent Scholar Award is a new program, there may be slight changes to it from year to year.
Students will be notified of any changes well in advance of the May 1 deadline.