 Kravinsky was born to a Jewish family and earned two Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, one in 1989 in Rhetoric with a dissertation on Aristotle’s topoi, and the other in 1994 in English Literature with a dissertation on paradoxical polysemy in Milton's "Paradise Lost".He also completed required courses for a third doctoral degree, in cultural anthropology from The New School For Social Research, but did not take the preliminary examination or write a dissertation.His B.A.