Teresa A. Meade is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Women’s Studies at Union College, New York. She is the author of “Civilizing” Rio: Reform and Resistance in a Brazilian City (1997), A Brief History of Brazil (2003), and is working on a project on marriage on the Alta California frontier, 1769–1860.

Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks is Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her recent books include Gender in History (Blackwell, 2001), Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (1993), Discovering the Global Past: A Look at the Evidence (1997), and Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World (1999).