5 December 2025

3:25 PM – 4:10 PM

Salle Proudhon

Michel Pretalli

Michel Pretalli is a professor of Italian Studies at Marie-et-Louis-Pasteur University. A specialist in Renaissance military literature, he is the author of various publications in this field, including the monographs Du champ de bataille à la bibliothèque (Classiques Garnier, 2017) and Giulio Cesare Brancaccio. Letteratura e armi al tramonto del Rinascimento (Vecchiarelli, 2022). Since 2018, he has also been conducting research on the theme of cunning, in which he has notably directed the project “Understanding and confronting disinformation,” which has led to a symposium, the creation of a dedicated set of tools, and several publications: Rusé comme un humain (Cunning as a Human), with A. Didierjean (Mardaga, 2022) and Une histoire de la désinformation (A History of Disinformation), with G. Zagni (Mimesis, 2025).

Where’s the line between right and wrong?

History is full of cases of information manipulation aimed at deceiving others: fake news, diversions, intoxication operations and a whole range of ingenious stratagems that illustrate how disinformation evolves over the centuries and adapts to the most diverse contexts. From the Egypt of the Pharaohs to Ancient Rome, from the forgers of the Middle Ages to the Cold War and the modern era: these historical cases raise the question of the boundary between what is true and what is false, a question of obvious topicality in the age of post-truth.