Robert T. Valgenti was born February 25, 1971, in Orange, NJ. He was raised in Morristown, NJ, where he attended Morristown High School and developed his interests in literature and writing. At the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA he was first introduced to Philosophy but decided to be an English major with the intention of teaching literature. His junior year was spent at Oxford University's Mansfield College, and during his winter break traveled to Italy for the first time. This trip would provide the motivation for his post-graduate plans and, ultimately, his philosophical interests. He graduated in the spring of 1993, having completed a senior thesis on the associations of metaphor and love in the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley. The academic year 1993-1994 was spent in Torino, Italy as a Fulbright Scholar, where he studied hermeneutics under the aegis of Gianni Vattimo, working primarily on the texts of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Pareyson.

Upon his return to the United States, he decided to postpone his graduate studies and teach high school English. Bob worked for five years at West Orange High School in West Orange, NJ, where an exceptional mix of experienced faculty and pedagogical freedom allowed him to develop his teaching style while being innovative with curriculum. This atmosphere allowed his students to share in his love of literature, to write creatively, and think cross-culturally through the exploration of world mythology.

In the fall of 1999, Bob returned to his study of Philosophy at DePaul University. Once again, he found himself in an environment that allowed him to pursue his interest in Italian philosophy, an interest on the outside of mainstream Continental philosophy but that would lead him to organize a conference on contemporary Italian philosophy in 2004. Working under the guidance of Angelica Nuzzo and David Farrell Krell, he wrote his Master's thesis on the concept of history in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. His second year of graduate school was spent once again in Torino, where he turned his attention fully to the work of Luigi Pareyson and laid the groundwork for his dissertation. In 2001, while finishing his coursework at DePaul, Bob returned to the classroom as a part-time instructor of Philosophy. In the academic year 2005-2006, Bob was visiting assistant professor of Philosophy at DePaul University.

On March 2, 2007, Bob successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation entitled "Critique and the Inheritance of Metaphysics: Philosophical Hermeneutics in the Shadow of Kant." Working under the guidance of William McNeill, Tina Chanter, and Avery Goldman, his dissertation argues that the method of Kant's critical philosophy remains alive in philosophical hermeneutics, particularly in the lineage that stretches from Martin Heidegger to Luigi Pareyson and beyond.

Bob is currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, PA. His current research involves a critique and development of the various historical and rational justifications for philosophical hermeneutics from Vico to Vattimo.

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