Teresa Meade was born in Iowa where she grew up on a farm, along with her eight brothers and sisters. She worked as a nanny, a hospital aid, and a waitress to earn money for college. When she was 19 years old, she left Iowa for Spain and a year of study at the University of Madrid and subsequent months hitchhiking around Europe. After 13 months abroad, she returned to the US with 25 cents in her pocket, a phone number of friends who loaned her money to get to Madison, Wisconsin, and the stamina to stand in line to sign up for classes. Over the next few years she studied, worked, protested injustice and eventually graduated with a degree in history. She worked for a year in Boston, and eventually made her way to Rutgers University where she entered a Ph.D. program in Latin American history. Impressed with the earnest dedication of Professor Peter Eisenberg, she began to study Brazil and eventually earned a Ph.D. Her books include "Civilizing" Rio: Reform and Resistance in a Brazilian City (1997), Science, Medicine and Cultural Imperialism, co-edited (1991), A Companion to Gender History, co-edited (2004), A Brief History of Brazil (2004, 2010) and A History of Modern Latin America (2010). She is married to a US historian, has two children, lives in Albany, NY and teaches at nearby Union College.