Roughly two dozen Rice students gathered in Rayzor Hall's Room 123 on a warm Thursday afternoon in late March to hear from one of Houston's most famous temporary residents: Jón Gnarr, the Icelandic punk-rock comedian who became mayor of Reykjavík. Gnarr is at Rice this spring as the first writer-in-residence at the university's Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences.
"I am very many things, and sometimes I'm so many things, I get confused what I am," the self-deprecating Gnarr told the students in Culture, Energy and the Environment: An Introduction to Energy Humanities, an environmental studies course taught by center Postdoctoral Fellow Matthew Schneider-Mayerson. Since Gnarr made a name for himself as teenage bass player in a punk band called Nefrennsli ("Runny Nose"), he has forged a career as an actor, goofball comedian, playwright, author, elected official and, as evident in his remarks to the Rice students, a passionate voice for climate-change awareness.