Kevin Melchionne (b.1964) grew up in Stamford, Connecticut.  He earned a B.A. from Hunter College of the City University of New York, focusing on Hunter’s philosophy department, which boasted a group of scholars in continental philosophy.  Melchionne’s studies were broad and rich, studied Heidegger, Kant, Wittgenstein, Freud, and the French post-structuralists.  He traveled to Italy and spent years in Paris, attending the lectures of Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, and Gilles Deleuze and reading many modern French literature, including Maurice Blanchot and Edmond Jabès. Returning from Paris, he entered the graduate program in philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where the heat of continental philosophy slowly gave way to the light of the Anglo-American tradition and ultimately earned a Ph.D.  He wrote a dissertation on aesthetics entitled “Cultivation: Art and Aesthetics in Everyday Life.”