Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- CONTENTS -- List of abbreviations -- About the contributors -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: asking questions of, and about, IR -- PART ONE What's the point of IR? -- 1 What's the point of IR? The international in the invention of humanity -- 2 Insecurity redux: the perennial problem of "the point of IR"--3 What's the point of IR? Or, we're so paranoid, we probably think this question is about us -- 4 In defense of IR -- PART TWO The origins of a discipline -- 5 Relocating the point of IR in understanding industrial-age global problems -- 6 Past as prefigurative prelude: feminist peace activists and IR -- 7 Beyond practitioner histories of international relations: or, the stories that professors like to tell (about) themselves -- 8 How elite networks shape the contours of the discipline and what we might do about it -- PART THREE Policing the boundaries -- 9 Be careful what you wish for: positivism and the desire for relevance in the American study of IR -- 10 Don't flatter yourself: world politics as we know it is changing and so must disciplinary IR -- 11 Indian IR: older and newer orientations -- 12 Undisciplined IR: thinking without a net -- PART FOUR Engaging the world -- 13 Mind the gap: defining and measuring policy engagement in IR -- 14 IR theory in the Anthropocene: time for a reality check? -- 15 UN studies and IR: history, ideas, and problem-solving -- 16 Beyond the "Ivory Tower"? IR in the world -- PART FIVE Imagining the future -- 17 Escaping from the prison of political science: what IR offers that other disciplines do not -- 18 The future of feminist international relations -- 19 A methodological turn long overdue: or, why it is time for critical scholars to cut their losses -- 20 Subverting the "international": imagining future as past -- Index