Overview
Montana food historian Dr. Mary Murphy will join chef Kenan Anderson for a conversation about the wide travels of Indigenous recipes, how food is one of the material expressions of people‘s identity, and the importance of cooking as it pertains to creating community. Anderson will bring his experience into light to discuss what the life of a chef is actually like, and how a chef comes up with the cuisine they are passionate about.
Drawing on Murphy's research into the historic role of food in the American West and Anderson's celebrated work bringing thoughtfully prepared meals to the dinner table, this conversation will uncover the stories, traditions, and flavors of the Mountain West.
About the Speakers
Mary Murphy
Dr. Mary Murphy is an American historian who has taught courses on the history of gender, the North American West, and the history of food at Montana State University since 1990. She served as co-director and director of the Ivan Doig Center for the Study of the Lands and Peoples of the American West and was the Michael P. Malone Professor of History from 2005–2010. In 2013 she was named a Distinguished Professor in the College of Letters and Science. Murphy is the author of Hope in Hard Times: New Deal Photographs of Montana, 1936–1942; Mining Cultures: Men, Women, and Leisure in Butte, 1914–41; and Like a Family, The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World. She has won numerous prizes and fellowships for her research, teaching, and mentoring, and received the Montana Governor’s Humanities Award in 2013. Along with colleagues Molly Kruckenberg, Zoe Ann Stoltz, and Jan Zauha, Murphy is currently writing a culinary history of Montana.
Kenan Anderson
Kenan Anderson is the Chef/Owner of Provecho, a small company offering rustic Mexican food made from scratch with local, heirloom, and organic ingredients in Bozeman, Montana. Cooking has been his passion since he was a kid, helping his mom make dinner and exploring the Latin American ingredients in the markets back in Pennsylvania. He’s worked in professional kitchens for 28 years, including a stint at Blackbird Kitchen from 2012 to 2026, working his way up from line cook to head chef and culinary director.