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J. Ann Tickner is ranked among the most influential scholars of international relations. As one of the founders of the field of feminist international relations, she is also among the most pioneering. A Feminist Voyage through International Relations provides a compendium of Tickner's work as a feminist IR scholar, from the late 1980s through today, tracing the methodological and epistemological story of feminist interventions in IR.

This review essay engages three texts focused on women who engaged with international thought in the early to mid-20th century. Women's International Thought: A New History and Women's International Thought: Towards a New Canon, both edited by Patricia Owens and her co-editors. The third, To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism, edited by Keisha Blain and Tiffany Gill. A few women discussed in these texts are recognized today, most are completely forgotten. Some aspired to careers in the academy but encountered obstacles on account of their sex and/or race. Many were scholar activists who claimed that their writings should address real world problems. These texts foreground the work of African American scholars, focused on racism and imperialism, subjects that IR ignores. Since some were denied publication outlets many wrote journals and published in newspapers. Although previously ignored, all these women had important things to tell us about international relations.

In this article, I suggest ways in which feminist analysis would further enrich Hobson's text. Questioning Hobson's assumption that it is possible to create separate 'metanarratives' about Eurocentrism and patriarchy, I claim that patriarchy, imperialism and Eurocentrism were co-constituted through the practices of Western imperialism and the creation of modern Western knowledge. I then take up Hobson's question that asks whether one is, or is not, Eurocentric is a more important question than whether or not one is a positivist. I argue that both these questions are important and interrelated. Whereas positivism aspires to tell one universal story, post-positivism acknowledges that all theories are constructed in the interest of someone. Therefore it offers us the opportunity to be reflective about our epistemological standpoints – whether or not they are Eurocentric. I then describe some methodological sensitivities concerning these issues that IR feminists have brought to their research. I conclude by reviewing some feminist post-colonial literature that reflects these sensitivities, thereby offering us some tools to overcome the Eurocentric trap.