Gender and class in modern American literature course inspired Central Connecticut’s professor Aimee Pozorski’s latest book, “Poor Little Rich Girl,” a collection of essays dissecting the neglected female characters of great American literature.

During her reading at the bookstore’s event “Central Authors,” Pozorski shares the three-step process in which her book was able to be brought to life: research, teaching and editing. The research dates back to Pozorski’s time is undergraduate school.

“In every classic 20th Century American text I would pick up, I could only see the vulnerable,” Pozorski said. “The child figure primarily, but also the sad women that seemed limited. Not by money most often but by chances, opportunity.”

Pozorski’s different approach to analytical readings allowed her to teach a new course when she was offered, which eventually developed into her Gender and Class in Modern American Literature.

The book was developed in the midst of the three credit semester long course, in which students were required to read a new book weekly.

Their responsibility was to figure out what scholars had already said about the texts, and use their close readings to offer new insight and interpretation of the old texts.

“‘Poor Little Rich Girl’ is an edited collection of 15 original essays and a reprint of a classic essay that reconsiders the women in distress in canonical American texts, approached from the method of close reading and the theoretical perspective of gender studies,” Pozorksi said.

“What does a women want?” Pozorski asserts that this is the question the collection of essays attempts to answer using, “artistic endeavors, political agency, freedom and independence.”

The Professor considers the process creating a book as a collaborative business emphasizing both the collaborative and the business aspects. The contributors initially included the 12 former “incredibly sophisticated” graduate students from the course.

“They showed up, and they showed up and they showed up. If ever you have edited a collection or special issue, you will know how rare that is,” Pozorski said of her students. “One or two or three people generally drop out putting the whole thing at risk, or run into personal road blacks and that can make it difficult, if not impossible to follow through. But that was never once the case with these students, all professionals in their own right.”

After the collection was gathered and the essays edited, the next step in the publication process was finding a publisher.

Because the book was made up primarily of the works of graduate students, this presented a challenge. As well as the fact that the number of publishable edited collections had been reduced due to the lack of profit. Pozorski was to find two more PHD’s that could help sell the book. These contributors included Susan Gilmore and Robert Troy.

The last steps of the publication process included finding a copy editor and conforming the format from MLA 7 to Chicago Style. Finally, the cover of the book is a picture from an exhibit Pozorski had seen on a trip to France. The Montreal Exhibit of Fine Arts had to go grant Pozorski special permission in order for the cover to be published.

The still image of a manikin on a swing wearing an Ivory Jean Paul Gaultier dress. Pozorski also had to receive permission from Gaultier himself, who at first thought she was mimicking his design due to the books title.

The final step in a five year process.

“Poor little Rich Girl: A Portrait of the lady in Modern American Literature” is available for purchase in the CCSU bookstore, online at amazon.com and Cambridge University Publishing.