A few thoughts: 1. I wonder if there are any essays or books that take the "Black Atlantic" idea of Paul Gilroy and somehow apply it to what we might call the "Black Mississippi"? 2. I am wondering if there are any works or scholars interested in how the river served specifically as a mean of transmitting culture and change among the communities served by it? Did Twain write about the river in these kinds of terms? This is probably fairly obvious stuff, but I cannot think of works specifically in Twain scholarship that treat these kinds of issues. Dr. Harold K. Bush, Jr. Saint Louis University