Until recently, International Relations (IR) paid remarkably little attention to identities, including its own. IR called up the nation-state, while displaying very little interest in either nation or state, or the meaning(s) of the hyphen in between. Assuming state-nations removed from view the contested politics of identity and boundary making within the state. This article seeks to make these politics visible. It considers, first, why IR might have missed nationalism, and then reviews different conceptions of nation. It analyses the gendered and global politics of nationalism, and concludes with the prospect and possibility of the nation in new transnational times.